LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ChapcL... Copyright No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Lectures and Sermons 



ON 



SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH CHRISTIAN LIBERAL 

EDUCATION. 



BY 

JOSEPH EMERSON, D.D. 

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN BELOIT COLLEGE. 





CHICAGO 

P. F. PETTIBONE & CO. 

1897 



7^S /<5'9'f 

.£78 L'^ 
/^f 7 



COPYRIGHT 1897 

BY 

MRS. HELEN B. EMERSON 



TO MY WIFE AXD MY PUPILS, 

THE COMPANIONS OF MY STUDIES, 

THESE FRAGMENTS OF THEIR RESULTS 

ARE GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 



INTRODUCTION 



These Lectures and Sermons are given to the press in 
compliance with the solicitation of friends, and in part, also, 
in a desire to endeavor something still in the work of Chris- 
tian Liberal Education, a work which has been the privilege 
of the author's life during such a half century as that now 
closing. 

It has been a further privilege to have, in such an educa- 
tion, the Department of Greek, not merely the language, but 
the life of which the language was the voice. The harmoni- 
ous zeal and thought, which produced such minds and souls 
as Homer, ^schylus and Socrates, and in turn were moulded 
by them, created and developed a nation, whose intellectual 
and moral life had pervaded the world when the Savior came, 
preparing mind to receive the word of life, as well as language 
to express it. 

It has been a still further privilege to ' ' unroll the books 
of the ancients" with the young men of a nation, itself as 
young as were the Greeks themselves who thought and felt 
and spoke and lived with Solon or Demosthenes. A young 
college, a young state, a young nation, and a great crisis in 
that nation's life, brought young men to a communion with 
ever young forces of truth and of life, which could not but 
tell upon the communicants. 

If it was inspiring to study the heroisms of the old time 
with the young spirits of the new time, it has been grand to 
see the kindling and the proving of the new heroism, which 



INTRODUCTION. 

has gone from that study, as the call has come, to some to die 
and to others to live for God, for Man and for Truth. 

The opportunity for such study has been mainly in the 
intercourse of the class-room or individual association and 
conversation. The class-room, however, or various platforms 
have given occasion for lectures or addresses, and the College 
chapel and various pulpits have called for sermons, all of which 
belong to a Christian Liberal Education, and from which a 
few have been detached for this volume. 

As faith and thought were made to live together, and our 
time, at least, cannot afford their divorce, it has seemed right 
to publish lectures and sermons in the same volume, and that 
religious thought should not be excluded from the one or 
practical thought from the other. 

The crisis of our time has led all our people through 
a course of high Christian and Liberal Education, from 
which we ought to come out larger and better men. The 
impressions of that education should not pass from our minds 
or be erased from our writings or our lives. Let them go 
with us into the coming time. So may we pass on from this 
into another, and, as we hope, an ''ever better age." 

It is good to think that the struggles, the sufferings, the 
martyrdoms of all the past and the present shall not be lost. 
To minds stayed by such a faith, the depth and the length of 
the sorrow is the measure of the height and the duration of 
the deliverance. The trials and the triumphs which we have 
seen may assure our hope, if they confirm our devotion. To 
contribute to such faith and hope and work, the true fruit of 
Christian Education, has been an aim of these essays. They 
are presented to the thought, rather than the criticism, of 
those who would love the light that they may do the truth. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURES. 



KO. 




PAGE. 


I. 


HOMER AND THE IXFAXCY OF GREECE, . 


3 


II. 


FINE ART, 


27 


III. 


ANCIENT CIYILIZATIONS, 


47 


lY. 


THE GOLDEN AGE, ..... 


63 


Y. 


EMPIRE, ...... 


81 


YI. 


SOCRATES AS A TEACHER, 


. 101 


YII. 


MARTYRDOM, ..... 


123 


YIII. 


OUR MARTYRS, . . . . , 


. 147 



SERMONS. 

I. THE PREACHER TO THE POOR, .... 167 

II. THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD, . . . . 183 

III. THE PERFECT MAN, ..... 199 

IV. JOHN, THE LOYED DISCIPLE, . . . .213 
V. PETER, THE SMITTEN ROCK, . . . . 227 

YI. BARNABAS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION, . . 239 

YII. PAUL BEFORE NERO, . . . . . 253 

YIII. THE PURE IN HEART, ..... 269 

IX. THE believer's REST, . . . . . 285 

X. THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT, . . .297 

XI. THE GOOD SHEPHERD, . . . . 311 

XII. THE VICTORY OF FAITH, . . . . .327 

XIII. THE WORD AND THE SEED, . . . . 343 



I. 
HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 



Homer and the Infancy of Greece. 

History is biography. Races and nations are individuals. 
Civilization is the education by which persons become citi- 
zens, making and sharing the commonwealth. 

Races and nations succeed one another, by families and 
genealogies of races and nations, leaving their wisdom and 
their wealth to their heirs. 

Our own civilization, the intellectual and spiritual move- 
ment and life which have come to us, was born in ancient 
Greece. It drew its nurture from much older nations, from 
Egypt and the East; but its own young life was a new life, 
which has been continuous in many ages and lands from then 
until now. 

We do not ignore the older wisdom of Egypt; nor the 
Phoenician enterprise, which brought that teaching to the 
new-born child; nor the Roman law or the Hebrew faith, 
which trained him afterward; nor the Teutonic vigor, which, 
still later, took that education as the soul of its own great 
might. But we hold that the common life, in which we live, 
was born when the power, which had grown for ages in 
northern mountains, came down to the capes and isles of 
Greece, and there met the thought, which studious ages had 
matured on the southern shores of the great Mediterranean. 

Let us look back, so far as we can, to the infancy of that 
life, which is our own. 

Of the commencement of Greek civilization, we, of course, 
know nothing, and of its early progress but very little, his- 
torically. A nation is like a child in this, as in other respects, 

3 



4 LECTURES. 

that its early thoughts are without articulate expression or 
permanent impression upon its own memory; yet in those 
forgotten years are the springing of traits which make up 
the character of the man, and it may be that a single word 
or look of kindness may call to the infant's eye a light gleam 
of love — a first opening to sunlight of a fountain of affection, 
which will thenceforth continue to flow, a well-spring of 
benevolence, throughout the life of the man. And by trac- 
ing back the currents of prevalent thought and feeling, we 
may divine what were the influences which surrounded the 
infancy of a man, a people, or a race. 

In seeking the sources of Greek civilization we are not left 
merely to such inferences. For the mind of the nation has 
gratefully cherished in memory the lessons by which it was 
formed. 

The child is a poet child. The father of history tells us 
that the epic poetry, which is daily read in our schools as a 
class exercise, was sung in Greece four hundred years before 
his time. We can only say of it, that it was composed in 
ages before the Greeks had any prose literature or permanent 
chronicles; that the days in which it was sung are separated 
from historic times by a gulf which no antiquarian scholar 
can bridge with events. But there we hear it, clearly echo- 
ing the manners of its own age, while it celebrates the deeds 
of a former one, of what was to it, antiquity. 

After those poems were composed we know but little of 
the course of things in Greece; the brave that lived after 
Agamemnon sleep forgotten like those that lived before 
him. 

But we know that the old songs were still chanted to the 
lyre, and that by them the admiring mind and soul of the 
nation were filled with high thoughts and heroic emotions, 
until they became mature enough for a new kind of exercise; 
to enter upon that active and self-conscious life which records 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GBEECE. 5 

itself in history, which thinks and writes and speaks, with 
and for the mind, as well as feels, and plays and sings, in 
and to the soul. 

The great peculiarity, then, of Greek civilization through- 
out, is that it is continually led and guided by music. 

In the times when Hellas was an infant, for it was never 
other than a singing child, the music and song is of heroes, 
the epic, which is to a nation of minds strengthened by years 
and experience of strong, rude impulses, but not matured by 
philosophic thought, what the nursery ballad is to the 
unschooled child. As Hellas grew older and more thought- 
ful and self-conscious, its youthful development, like that of 
lad or maiden, is marked by the song of love and of hope; 
and so there follows next in Greece the age of lyric poetry. 
Then as, under this perennial childhood, there grew the 
strength of manhood, like the unconquerable heart of the 
live oak under its evergreen foliage, and the Persian invaders 
came, like a tornado of the tropics upon the same oak; the 
music that ever played about it assumed strains fitted to the 
mind and soul of man, bracing itself w^ith high thoughts for 
strife and suffering, and unbending itself in rude hilarity; 
and they that struggled and prevailed at Marathon and 
Salamis, wrote and acted, and heard at their festivals, from 
daybreak until nio;htfall, trao-edies and comedies. 

And as the maturity of green and hale age comes on, its 
philosophical thought is still harmonious and musical, not 
in. vocal measure, but in the beautiful, melodious, active 
vibrations of mind and spirit. Socrates, walking the streets 
of Athens and conversing in the market, seems not so much 
like a profound philosopher as like an inspired minstrel, gifted 
to touch the cords of the human heart and to draw from it 
that wondrous and celestial music of true and holy thoughts 
and feelings, which alone can give us some idea of what may 
be meant by the music of '* harpers harping with their harps," 



6 LECTURES. 

which one hath told us that he heard round about the throne 
on high. And, if Socrates was thus the Aoidos — the original 
bard of philosophy — Plato follows him as its Rhapsodist, the 
singer to transmit to future times in permanent forms, those 
strains by which men should learn ' ' the numbers and meas- 
ures of a true life," 

'' JVumerosqice modosque verae ediscere vitae.'*^ 

But with declining years and strength, trouble came to 
Hellas, and the voice, grown mellow and canorous, but not 
less flexible by age, must learn the persuasivenesss of the plea 
and the protest, and so in the din of the rude Macedonian 
arms we hear the tuneful eloquence of Demosthenes, and the 
scene closes, but suddenly it opens again and reveals Greece 
as mistress of all Asia. 

So Hellenic national life is continually led and guided by 
music; its childhood is stimulated and trained by the epic; 
its youth is charmed by the lyric; its manhood is moved by 
the drama; its age is instructed by harmonious philosophy; 
and its departing spirit persuaded to linger yet longer about 
the Acropolis by eloquence. 

Now let us go back and observe more particularly the 
earlier ages of Greek civilization. Apollo and the Muses 
presided over it. Its instruments were music, and those 
customs and tendencies and exercises which music may fitly 
accompany. 

This agency of music in the early development of Hel- 
lenic culture is fully recognized by the ancients themselves. 
Horace expresses their opinion in his well-known lines, which 
we may freely translate, as follows: 

Orpheus, as a sacred voice of the gods, caUed the forest-roving men 
from the life of slaughter and vile food; therefore it was said that he 
soothed tigers and fierce lions. And Amphion, too, founder of Thebes, was 
said to move rocks and lead them where he would hy the soft persuasive- 
ness of his lyre. This was their wisdom of old, to distinguish the public 



HOMER AND THE INFANGT OF QBE EG E. 7 

from the private, the sacred from the common, to withhold from promiscu- 
ous love, to give rights of marriage, to make common works for defense, 
to grave laws in wood. So came to hards the respect and the name of di- 
vine. After these, glorious Homer and Tyrtaeus incited masculine hearts 
to war by their songs ; oracles were spoken in verse, and men were pointed 
the way to live. 

So far Horace. Indeed, all the early tradition of Greece 
is as much pervaded by music as that of Rome is by stern 
hardihood. The listening for divine melody is co-extensive 
with the Greek race. In all Northern Greece 'Hhe 
Muses haunt clear spring and shady grove and sunny hill." 
Pieria, in Macedonia, was their native home; their presence 
pervaded the grand ranges of Pindus, which border Thessaly, 
and the cliffs of Parnassus in Phocis and Helicon in Beotia. 
Their influence was over the fountains of Hippocrene and 
Aganippe. In the Peloponnesus was Cyllene, where Mercury 
invented the lyre, and the mountain ranges which Apollo and 
the Muses frequented with dance and song. The hills and 
forests of Arcadia were resonant with the musical reeds of 
Pan. In their foreign settlements and voyages the world 
was still for them full of music. It mingled strangely with 
the rude and fearful imaginings with which they peopled the 
borders of the world. They associated the minstrelsy of 
Orpheus with the cruel savageness of Thrace and located 
Sirens upon a fearful coast in the dim west of the Mediter- 
ranean. 

All these fables express the tone of mind of the Hellenic 
people in their early rudeness, and they would be of them- 
selves sufficient to point to the natural history of their mar- 
velous culture. 

But, as we have already said, we have now in our hands 
poems which reveal to us life in Greece ages before Greece 
came to be historical. The revelations are principally of 
two periods, that of the minstrels themselves and that of the 
heroes whom they sang. 



8 LECTURES. 

The poems whicli pass under the name of Homer came 
into being so long before history that we have no means of 
assigning to them any certain date. They are supposed to 
have been sung about eight hundred years before the Chris- 
tian era. This would be three hundred years before Tragedy, 
three hundred and fifty before history was written by Herod- 
otus, and fifty years before the reputed founding of Rome. 

Greece as revealed to us then was in many jDarticulars like 
the Greece of historic times. It was a nation, not by unity 
of government, but by common language, institutions and 
sympathies. The general meetings of Greece were not 
judicial or legislative as among our nations, but for common 
sacrifices and exhibitions. 

The representatives of Hellenic unity, and, indeed, the 
ministers of Greek society were the priests and minstrels, 
quite as much as the kings. 

It is a little difiicult for us, with our machinery of gov- 
ernment, to understand the constitution of society in the 
primitive times. Each man then was the vindicator of his 
own rights, according to certain principles of common law, 
which were recognized by the common consent of men. His 
appeal was not to a regular judiciary, but to the old men of 
the city, sitting '' in a sacred circle," either at the city gate, 
or in the market place, and forming a court of arbitration, 
sustained by the public opinion of the community. 

For instruction in those principles of natural and tradi- 
tional right by which the intercourse of man with man was 
to be governed, as well as in their relations and duties to 
their gods, the early Greeks depended, like all other nations, 
upon their educated lass. And, in the absence of books and 
prose literature, who were the educated class of Greece? 
Who led the thinking of the people? The priests and the 
bards, to whom also the respect of the people attached not a 
little of sacredness of character. And of these two classes, 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 9 

w&ile the priests, especially those of the oracles, might have 
spoken with niore authority, the traveling minstrels must, on 
the other hand, have exerted a more general influence upon 
the forming thoughts and sentiments of the people. For, 
traveling from place to place, they came continually in con- 
tact with the people at large, and everywhere finding ready 
entertainment and eager listeners, they supplied almost the 
entire intellectual and spiritual incitement of the people. 
They exercised upon a people of quick and trustful mind the 
influence at once of the sermon, the code of laws, the com- 
mon school, the public lecture, the newspaper, and the whole 
body of literature. The impressions which the bard made 
were not carelessly received and soon effaced; but when he 
came to a village and sung of the virtue of Penelope, the 
wisdom of Nestor, or of the .endurance of Ulysses, he left 
material for thought and for character with the men and the 
women, the maidens and the youth who heard him. 

But the minstrel was in his glory in the common festivals 
of Greece. Common games and common sacrifices were 
almost the only formal union known among the Greek states, 
and in times somewhat later than those of which we are 
now speaking, the national games, particularly the Olympic 
games, constituted such a general reunion of the whole Hel- 
lenic family. 

But in the times of the Aoidoi, Panhellenic unity was 
mainly expressed by a common reverence for the oracle at 
Delphi, and by the common language and sentiments diffused 
by wandering bards and somewhat by commercial connec- 
tions. There were, however, festivals which brought to- 
gether neighboring or kindred states in various parts of the 
Greek world. These were generally connected with the wor- 
ship of some deity who was the patron of the confederacy. 

Perhaps we can in no way get a better view of the 
influence of the bards, or of the civilization of Greece in their 



10 LECTURES. 

day, than by trying to realize the scene of one of these 
^'panegyrics." Let us go then to the May Day of Ionia, 

THE FESTIVAL AT DELOS. 

In the midst of the Aegean Sea lies a little island, hardly 
three miles in length and less than one mile in breadth, T\'hich 
the ancients called Delos. It is surrounded by the beautiful 
group of the Cyclades, many of which are much larger than 
itself, but they all, in the estimation of the Greeks, were 
honored in being members of its court. 

For Delos was the birthplace of Apollo and Diana. 
According to their legend the island itself was once a god- 
dess of heaven, Asteria, who fled from the sky to escape the 
passion of Jove, and became an island floating in the sea, 
until after long wanderings it was at last fixed, in order that 
Latona, sister of Asteria, who was wandering, rejected by 
every land as she was about to become a mother, might find 
a resting place and give birth to the new divinities. It was 
fastened by four columns of adamant to the solid foundations 
of the earth, so that earthquakes could not shake it, and 
mortals named it Delos, but the gods in Olympus called it 
the far-famed star of the earth. 

In the earliest times of which we have record, the Ionic 
Greeks used to assemble at Delos, with their wives and their 
children, to celebrate an annual festival in honor of their 
patron deity, Apollo, probably choosing for the purpose the 
reputed birthday of the god, which fell on the sixth of Thar- 
gelion, about our first of May. 

Iji the gray of the morning we will ascend Mount Cyn- 
thus, the rugged mass of granite which rises five hundred 
feet high in the midst of the island. We climb by stone 
steps which lead up the w^estern slope, and passing under a 
portal of huge rough stones, which shall bear witness ages 
hence that there were mighty men in these days of old, we 
find ourselves in the Acropolis, upon the summit. 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 11 

Beneath us sleeps the sea, and all around stand the 
Cyclades, solemnly guarding the sacred island. But the 
repose is not long. Already in the first thin light of dawn 
boats are putting off from every harbor and beach, and they 
come more and more thickly until the sea is alive with them. 
The sun rises. Its light falls first upon the wild ridges of 
Naxos to the south, vvhere Bacchus and his train used to 
revel; then it glistens upon the marble peaks of Paros, and 
soon Syros and Rheneia and Olearos and all the Cyclades are 
bathed in light. 

The level beams, as they strike the sea, flash in the spray 
of a thousand oars in the straits toward the northeast and the 
east and they are reflected from the southwest, the west and 
the northwest by a cloud of sails, swollen by the zephyr, and 
every oar and every sail is hurrying to Delos. 

So the lonians come, little boats from many islands in the 
south, the fleets of Samos and Miletus from the east, from 
the northeast barges of Chios, and from the north thronging 
boats coming out from the shadows of the grave mountains 
of Andros and Tenos. But we cannot stay here longer, for 
there in the northwest the sacred galley of Athens is already 
in view from the summit. 

Athens is the mother city of all the lonians. In all their 
cities there is a sacred hearth upon which is continually burn- 
ing a fire, originally kindled from the sacred hearth of the 
' ' Pry taneion " of Athens. 

As we come to the shore we find a busy scene. For this 
is a great mart, as well as a festival. All the Greek com- 
merce and art of the day is represented, and there are great 
Phoenician ships at the beach, which have visited lands of 
which the Greeks almost dread to hear. These have brought, 
not only their own choice manufactures of cloth and their 
unrivalled purple, but tin from Britain, gold from Spain, 
ivory and precious woods from Africa, amber from the shores 
of the Baltic, silks and gems from India and China. 



12 LECTURES. 

Our attention is suddenly called away from the fair by 
the cry of ''Homer!" ''Homer!" A Chian vessel has 
touched the strand and a blind old man is led from it by a 
boy, who bears a harp. We shall hear that harp before the 
day is done. 

Hardly is the poet on shore, when the Athenian galley 
appears, rounding the point of the adjoining island, Rheneia. 
It is the same vessel in which Theseus went to Crete when 
he slew the Minotaur, and he instituted this festival on his 
return. It is the law at Athens that this same vessel shall 
always be sent upon this "Theoria," and so they continually 
replace its decayed timbers, preparing for the philosophers 
of future centuries their curious question, whether after the 
repairs of a thousand years the "Theoris " is, or is not, still 
the old galley of Theseus. It is moved not by sails, but by 
thirty long oars, all keeping perfect time to the clear song of 
the "Keleustes." 

Before it left Athens, the priest of Apollo adorned the 
barge with garlands of bay branches and a solemn sacrifice 
was offered at Marathon for its safe voyage. While it is 
gone no man may suffer the penalty of death at Athens, a 
law destined, many generations later, to secure to the world 
the last lessons of the wisdom of Socrates. 

The barge is brought to the shore, and its landing is the 
signal for forming the grand procession. It moves to the 
sound of music, and is led by the ' ' Architheoros " of Athens 
in gorgeous attire, followed by the rest of his " theoria," all 
with garlands of bay, and after them, state by state, follow 
the other lonians in long and brilliant festal robes. They 
proceed to the sacred enclosure of the' temple of Apollo, 
where, after the sacrifices, they present their gifts, which 
consist of such possessions as are esteemed most valuable 
and most worthy to be given to a god — tripods and caldrons 
of bronze, or more valuable ones of ' ' much labored " iron, 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 13 

or even of silver and costly gold, and all the choice works of 
their rude art and treasures from distant lands. 

Next they gather round a famous altar, one of the won- 
ders of the world, made entirely of the horns of wild beasts, 
so interlaced as, without other fastening, to constitute a firm 
and symmetrical structure. They said that Apollo made it 
from the horns of beasts slain by his huntress sister. 

About this altar they dance a sacred dance, instituted 
by Theseus on his return from Crete. It is the same of 
which we have a description from Homer himself, which we 
give in a literal version, without venturing to refine the 
simplicity of the master: 

The dance, which once in broad Cnossus 

Daedalus contrived for fair-haired Ariadne. 

There youth and maids, whom lovers must buy with many oxen, 

Danced, each with his hand upon the wrist of his partner. 

And the maids had delicate linen veils, and the youth wore 

Tunics well woven, and softly shining with olive oil. 

And the maids bore beautiful garlands, while the boys 

Had glittering daggers in silver belts. 

And now they flitted with knowing feet 

Right easily, as when a wheel, well fitted in his hands, 

A potter sits and tries if it will run. 

And again they danced in rows opposed one to another. 

And a multitude stand around the charming dance 

Delighted; and among them played a divine bard 

Upon his lyre, while in the very midst of the dancers 

Two tumblers were whirling wildly, but in perfect time to the music. 

The strain is one which Olen, the Lycian, taught at Delos 
in the former days. The dancers accompanied it with a 
song, singing first of Apollo, then of Latona and of Artemis, 
lover of arrows and of heroes and heroines of old. 

The auditory, charmed with this song, are next amused 
with a medley imitating to the life, with the voice and with 
the castanets, the languages and music and manners of all 
the nations of the earth. 



14 LEGTUEE8. 

After the dances the hosts of spectators are seated to wit- 
ness games of skill and prowess. The prizes for victors are 
brought forth. They are ' ' kettles and tripods, horses and 
mules and strong oxen, and fair girdled women and gray 
iron." The chiefs and men of renown from all Greece come 
forward to strive for them, for to be an athlete has not yet 
become a trade. The games are boxing, wrestling, the foot 
and chariot race, combats of spearmen, pitching the quoit, 
archery and hurling stones. 

These contests have their interest, but let us refresh our 
minds with quieter scenes for a little while. 

Here are palm trees, the sacred tree of Delos. They do 
not grow in Greece proper. There our guide shows us the 
identical one beneath which Apollo was born. This little 
stream, the Inopus, they say, is a branch of the Nile, which 
has flowed to Delos under the sea. Now come to the Arte- 
misium, or temple of Diana. As we enter the enclosure, 
here upon the left is a green mound with an olive tree upon 
it. There were buried Hyperoche and Laodice, two maidens 
who came long ago bringing gifts to Diana from the Hyper- 
boreans, a people living in perpetual peace and blessedness, 
free from sickness, toil or battle, in a happy clime, beyond 
the birthplace of the north wind. But the maidens never 
returned home from their pious embassy, and from that time 
their nation has wrapped their gifts in wheaten straw and 
commended them to the piety of all the intervening nations 
to transmit them to Delos. The strangers, however, were 
not forgotten by the people among whom they died. They 
rest here in the holy ground, and the maids of Delos, before 
they are married, cut off a braid of hair and wind it round a 
spindle and lay it on their tomb, and the Delian youth 
wreathe a lock of their hair about a young green twig, and 
they, too, put it upon the mound of the Hyperborean 
maidens. 



HOMEB AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 15 

We return to the great assembly just in time for the con- 
test for the palm branch, which is to be the prize for the 
poets. In the midst of the concourse, but most closely sur- 
rounded by a throng of those maids of Delos who have been 
in the dance which we have seen, sits that blind bard from 
Chios. lie sings, as was fit, the praises of Apollo, not for- 
getting, as was also fit, more earthly objects of poetical 
adoration. We give, as before, in a literal translation, the 
conclusion of his song: 

** An peaks are dear and jutting headlands 
Of lofty mountains, and rivers that roll to the sea, 
But Delos, thou shining one, is most the joy of thy heart; 
There for thee, in their flowing robes, the lonians gather, 
With their children and their honored wives . 
When they form their assembly they remember thee 
And gladden thee with boxing and dance and song. 
He that should come then, when the lonians were gathered, 
Would say that they were free from death and age forever, 
For he would see the grace of all and be glad in his soul, 
As he looked on men and fair-zoned women. 
And swift ships and their manifold treasures. 
And this great wonder, too, whose fame shall never die, 
The maids of Delos, hand maidens of the archer god; 
But now may Apollo be kind and Diana, 
And fare ye all well, and so henceforth 
Remember, when any one of earth-dwelling men, 
A way-faring stranger that may come, shall ask: 
* Maidens, what man is to you sweetest of bards 
That come hither, and in whom do ye delight most ?' 
Then right well do ye answer all in kindness: 
*A blind man, and he dwells in craggy Chios; 
His songs henceforth all bear the palm,' 
And we will carry your fame wheresoever over the earth 
We go about to fair cities of men, 
And they will believe our report, for it is true.'* 

So he ceases and they give him the palm. The assembly 
is broken up and night comes on, a night of rest and pleasant 
dreams. On the morrow the lonians are away for their 
homes. But they go richer than they came, for they go with 



16 LECTURES. 

new thoughts and emotions; germs that shall be throughout 
the year maturing into the civilization of Greece. 

This scene is not one of mere amusement. It is the edu- 
cation of Greece and the prejDaration of our own civilization. 
These Greeks at Delos are a rude race. The Phoenicians 
trading there despise them. They come to these isles of 
Javan to bring the wares of older nations in exchange for 
'^persons of men and vessels of brass." (Ezekiel 27, 13.) 
And many a tale of wonder and of fear have these Tyrian 
sailors and merchants told the simple natives respecting 
the lands from which these wonderful things have come, 
stories inspired by that Oriental imagination which pervades 
the Arabian Nights, stimulated by the eagerness of the aud- 
itors and tinged by a crafty disposition to terrify them from 
entering into a rivalry with them in their commerce. 

The Phoenicians had, moreover, the wonder of letters, 
and the Greeks learned from them their alphabet, that col- 
umn of strange characters, which, according to all our con- 
ceptions, leads the van of all education. 

We talk of literature and of letters as essential condi- 
tions and definitions of human knowledge and thought. 
But literature is not a Greek word or a Greek thought. 
Education with them was not by letters, but by music. And 
so when Cadmus and other Phoenicians brought them let- 
ters they did not need them as conditions of thought or of 
memory, but only for such use as they saw the Phoenicians 
make of them, for numerical calculations. For their 
thought and history they had a more living expression, 
which they never learned of the Phoenicians. For the 
Muses, daughters of Memory, were born upon their own soil, 
and from them the Greeks had learned rhythm, by which 
their spoken words assumed a stable form and made thought 
abiding. Those forms of rhythmic thought, which formed 
the nation, were prepared by their poets, like this Homer, 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 17 

whom we have seen and heard. Content with this educa- 
tion, they seem not to have used the " Phoenician marks " as 
alphabetic letters till long after they used them as numerical 
figures. 

And Homer has gone! But he does not go as he came. 
A new palm branch is in his hand, a new garland is about his 
temples. But, more than these, a new poem is forming in 
his mind. During the sports which his blind eyes could not 
behold, he has been sitting by a Phoenician ship, just from 
Tarshish, hearing a Sidonian sailor, who has served many 
long years in the navy of King Hiram, tell of the wonders 
he has seen in distant lands and waters. The sailor is of that 
Oriental race whose imaginations indited the Arabian Nights. 
His name might be Sinbad, and, seeing the enthusiasm of the 
bard, he goes on to tell him not only of Egyptian Thebes, 
with its hundred gates, but to clothe all the far-off islands 
and coasts of the great sea with fabulous attractions and 
fabulous terrors. The bard has heard him silently. And 
when the last great shout from the arena told him that the 
games of the athletes were done, he took his harp and sung 
the song whose conclusion we have heard. But when the 
festival is over his mind reverts to the strange things which 
he has heard. His mind is the mind of a Greek poet, and 
those fables cannot remain in it, that chaos of ' ' Gorgons, 
Hydras and Chimaeras dire," which they were, as they came 
from the Canaanite. 

A poet is a maker, a creator, and in his mind is a living 
principle of order and law, of rhythm, which is the forming 
principle of civilization. It is a part of that image of God 
in which He made man. And so the spirit of the poet moving 
over that chaos of imaginations called out of it a poem. 

His eye, secluded as it is by his physical infirmity from 
the distractions of the visible world, follows a hero, a Greek, 
Ulysses, the most sagacious chief of those who fought at 



18 LECTURES. 

Troy, as he is driven by adverse winds round these fearful 
coasts of which the sailor told, and borne through them all 
by the blessing of the gods upon the struggle and endurance 
of a ready mind, a stout heart and a God-fearing spirit. 

So as the poet passes from island to island in the Grecian 
sea, and from valley to valley among the Greek mountains, 
the successive scenes of that Greek Pilgrim's Progress, which 
we call the Odyssey, are composed and set to music in his 
mind. Whenever he comes to a village the young and the 
old gather around him and he sings to them the song that is 
in his heart, and its burden ever is the victory of the hero 
soul, especially as a victory of self-command and loyalty; the 
hero, whom the excitement of victory can not carry away, 
whom not the sweet lotus fruit, nor the wiles of Circe, the 
song of the Sirens, or the blandishments of Calypso, divine 
goddess, who besought him to remain in her lovely island 
and become immortal, could tempt to forget his home. 
Famine could not drive him to touch the sacred kine of the 
sun god. Fear could not unman him, even in the horrid 
cave of the Cyclops, or as he looked down into the seething 
abyss of Charybdis, or saw the six heads of Scylla bear his 
companions aloft, or on the misty shore of the land of ghosts. 
Cast alone and destitute upon a strange land, he proves him- 
self a hero hardly more by his achievements than by his 
modesty. At last he arrives at home, and here, too, he is 
great in his single-handed victory over the host of suitors, 
but if possible even greater in that self-command which 
could bear in a beggar's garb their jeers, abuse and violence. 
So he presents his picture of the man who is every inch a 
king, and his royalty is a throne of self-command in his own 
heart, so that he is a king when all alone, or in the form 
of a beggar or of a suppliant, as well as when fawned 
upon by men. So we welcome him home after his twenty 
years of war and wandering to rocky Ithaca and to his own 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 19 

true wife again. For Penelope, too, is the hero woman and 
her heroism also is the heroism of inward truth. 

The story, wherever sung, has not been an idle song, but 
it has left materials for thought and character with the men 
and women, the maidens and the youth, who have heard it. 

So the bards went everywhere winning hearts and stirring 
spirits and feeding minds, and thus forming the nation for 
its greatness. 

The subjects of the songs were as various as the thoughts 
of active though unreflecting minds, for all the life and 
thought of Greece was tuneful, the deeds of heroes, the 
wars of Thebes and Troy, the labors of Hercules and the 
honors of their gods; — and others sung of love, and instilled 
the sentiments of old Greek chivalry; and others again, like 
Hesiod, struck a more thoughtful vein, telling of the works 
by which the husbandman must thrive, and anon leading 
them to a higher and deeper contemplation by singing of the 
golden age, that had been, and which might perhaps in some 
distant time come again, the days of Kronos, when 

Men lived as gods with hearts free from care, 

Far away from toil and sorrow; and timorous age 

Fell not upon them ; but ever with hands and feet alike 

They rejoiced in festivity away from all ills, 

Rich in flocks and dear to the blessed gods. 

And they died as subdued by sleep, and noble things all 

Were theirs ; — the corn-bearing field bore them fruits 

Of its own motion, plenteous and unbegrudged, and at free 

Ease they did their works with many noble mates. 

But now that earth had hidden this stock beneath it, 

By the counsel of great Jove they are noble spirits. 

Dwellers still of earth, watchers of mortal men, 

That watch their justice and their deeds of wrong; 

That go clad in mist all over the earth. 

Givers of good. Tliis kingly honor had they. 

By such songs was the mind of young Greece nurtured 
through centuries until Athens became possible. The 
measure of them all was the Dactylic hexameter, a measure 



20 LECTURES. 

not well suited to a monosyllabic language like our own, but 
admirably accordant with the constitution of the Greek 
tongue, with its host of sonorous polysyllables, and with the 
constitution of the young Greek soul with its tides of har- 
monious enthusiasm. Lucian calls them ^^men full of 
blood." They were hearty out-door men, that breathed oxy- 
gen and enjoyed poetry with their hearts rather than with 
their tastes, and with whom poetry was large enough to cover 
all their life. And so the full swell and roll of the hexame- 
ter, with its capacity to express both the rapture and the 
heavy sorrow of a great heart, answered their wants. It is 
a measure preeminently capable of expressing all generous 
emotion and sublime thought and straightforward truth, 
and singularly incapable of expressing anything mean or nar- 
row, or merely fantastical. 

Under this tuition Greece continued for an indefinite 
series of generations. We have remains of these poems dating 
centuries back of any known author of any other species 
of composition, and the earliest poets tell of singers in the 
days which were antiquity to them, and even in the day of 
those earlier bards the art would seem to have been already 
developed and in its ascendancy, so that when it arose no 
man can tell. But this we know, that it was thus moving 
over the surface of the Greek mind for centuries before 
Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, caused the poems of Homer to 
be collected and arranged. 

Then we come to the age of Greek literature; then the 
Iliad came to be a literary work; till then it had been in its 
relation to the people generally an oral song. Then, too, 
poetry lost its entire command over the spiritual exercise of 
man, and as it withdrew to the more refined parts of human 
nature, losing, of course, more in losing the wholeness of 
the soul than it could gain by retiring to its choice faculties, 
it left the comprehensive hexameter for other measures, 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE. 21 

which express the poet who is only the noblest and most 
refined part of a man, rather than the poet who is the fully 
developed man in all the nobleness of his complete humanity 
— the image of God; and so the name of bard, with the 
divinity which attaches to it, goes out with the epic age and 
the heroic verse. 

After this come other ages of Greek culture, the lyric, 
the tragic, the artistic, the philosophic and the rhetorical. 

This early poetry delighted chiefly in the presentation of 
the hero man, that model which the Greeks loved to look 
upon, that they might be changed to the same image. 

There was the story of Jason bidden to bring the golden 
fleece from Colchis. It was a fearful enterprise, like that of 
Christopher Columbus, but his brave heart assayed it. 
Athena taught him to build his ship, the "' Argo," and to put 
in it a speaking beam to tell the way. He gathered the 
braves of Greece and sailed away from the known to the 
unknown seas. The Symplegades rocks, by continual dash- 
ing, forbade their way. Trusting in the divine word and 
their own brave hearts, they dared the passage, and the rocks 
just grazed their ship as they gnashed together for the last 
time; for their courage had done what God-fearing courage 
does — had vanquished the danger and fixed the rocks forever; 
and that courage and helj) divine bore them on through 
perils and victories till they brought home the golden fleece. 

Then there was Hercules, with his great heavy-laden 
heart, wandering over many lands, quelling monsters; and 
the wars of Thebes and Troy; and that Pilgrim's Progress of 
Greece, the Odyssey, of which we have spoken. It was not 
to them a mere Crusoe story, though who shall tell how 
much Robinson Crusoe has done for English-speaking boys? 
It nursed the heroism of patience in all Greek history. 
Horace tells us how to the Romans Homer was wiser than 
Platonist or Stoic. 



22 LECTURES. 

The story of Ulysses and Telemachus inspired the French 
sage, Fenelon, and his work again found its way to the back- 
woods of America, and when there a child of destiny was 
born, he was named, in memory of the ancient hero, Ulysses 
Grant. 

If Homer's Achilles was the model which inspired the 
career of Alexander the Great, how much may we owe to 
that picture of versatile sagacity, unflinching courage, clear 
self-reliance and invincible endurance, which he gave in his 
Ulysses and which we have seen reproduced in our own? So 
the honor and the influence of these old bards still remain in 
the new as in the old world and time. 

What shall we say of the Iliad? It is the epic, heroic 
poem of the world; heroic, because its subject is the hero; 
epic, because its material is, not the cold stone or the dead 
letter, but the living, the '' winged word;" — a poem, because 
its author is a poet, a creator. He is Phidias and Angelo, 
making of his living words statues of heroes and of gods, 
and setting them in the gallery of the mind of every Greek 
who was enough a Greek to receive them. Again, he is a 
Sophocles and a Shakespeare, making his gods and heroes to 
move in a great drama, which, fixed in memory by its rhythm, 
would pass before the mind's eye of that Greek, even at his 
daily labor. 

Still again, he is an Aeschylus, a Miiton, and a Bunyan. 
We call his work an Iliad. He did not call it so. His title 
was, " The Ruinous Wrath of Achilles," and, as the Odyssey 
is a Pilgrim's Progress, so the subject of the Hiad is not so 
much the Siege of Troy as the ''Holy War of Law and Order 
Against Passion and Anarchy for the Possession of the Town 
of Mansoul." This theme runs through it, not only in the 
strife in the hearts of Achilles and Agamemnon, but in the 
oppositions of god and god, and of hero and hero, and 
especially in the continual contrast of the orderly Greek host 



HOMER AND THE INFANCY OF GREECE, 23 

and the Trojan mob. The *' winged word " could wing its 
way to every Greek, and he, having no dime novel or daily 
paper to distract his digestion, lived upon it, and it formed a 
nation full of the instinct of loyalty and law, which showed 
itself as a forming principle in all Greek thought and life, 
and as a force in all the long-dravv^n conflicts of Euroj)e with 
Asia, standing like A j ax at Thermopylae, and charging like 
Achilles at Marathon, Salamis and Cynaxa, until for its 
crowning achievement it tamed the wild spirit of the new 
Achilles, Alexander of Macedon, who, making himself leader 
of Greece, extended her laws from the Adriatic to the Indus; 
a rule soon to be extended, by her moral conquest of her 
Roman victor, to the Atlantic; and now it has found and 
annexed the ISTew World and is encircling the globe. A 
grand token of it is the collection of antique statuary which 
Greece sent to the Columbian Exposition, and which is now 
the prized possession of our own College. Those forms are 
the mute counterpart of those Homeric heroes, who, though 
**the earth hath hidden their stock beneath it," still live in 
our minds. 

May we without impiety so vary Hesiod as to say, that 
^^ by the counsel of the great Jehovah, they go clad in mist 
all over the earth;" that Homer's ''winged words," going 
wheresoever the sunlight goes, are a part of the healing in 
the wings of the Son of Righteousness ? 

Upon the wall of my own class-room is a bust of old 
Homer, with those of Socrates, Plato and Demosthenes, 
which are to us memorials of the hour when our own young 
men were in the war for liberty and law and the country's 
cause. 

Homer looks down upon us all the day long in a quiet 
serenity and dignity of wisdom; but as the beaming of the 
declining sun creeps up the wall, and begins to gild the 
features, they gather glory. I gaze with a pleased interest. 



24 LECTURES. 

then with wonder, admiration, awe, as the ancient wisdom 
seems to live again, yet not to open the eyes to wonder at the 
novelties of these later days, but rather to wake to commun- 
ion with that all-seeing sun, which alone of all things here 
had known him in that morning of civilization, when in old 
Greece he struck the key-note to which the mind of man is 
still vibrating. So I sit a hushed spectator, and feel that 
mute wisdom, until the sun is gone and the illusion fades in 
twilight. But the impression is a lasting one. I return to 
the work of the present with a more cheerful joy, for that 
view of the wisdom of the past, glorified by the hopes of the 
future. 

Those features, carved by some old artist, express what 
Homer was to the men of old time. To us he is a poet, and 
poetry is an embellishment and a luxury. To them he was 
the wise man, and his wisdom was a fountain of life. 

In their view it was his voice which waked the Greek 
nation, and his word which falling upon that barbarous mind 
was like the echo of that potent word, which spake in chaos, 
" Let there be light, and there was light! " 

And then it was the harmony, at once of his verse and of 
his thought, which formed that Greek mind to those har- 
monies which made Greece the teacher of the world. 



IL 

FINE ART. 



Fine Art. 

We meet this evening to commence a course of lectures 
whose aim is the intellectual improvement and the refine- 
ment of the community. Such occasions naturally suggest 
to the mind the general head under which such efforts are 
to be classed, namely, the Fine Arts. Why I classify them 
thus, I shall endeavor to show as we proceed. 

Art and nature are correlative terms. The one expresses 
the toilsome effort of man to embody his conception; the 
other is the body which the free volition of Deity hath pre- 
pared for His thought. Art is the work of the hands of 
man; nature is the handiwork of God. 

Art, like nature, has a division into two kinds, corre- 
sponding to the double nature of man. We have what we 
call ^nhe Arts," whose aim is to meet the exigencies and 
practical necessities of life, or to contribute to its comfort or 
convenience. And, again, we have another sphere of effort, 
in which the aim is not to satisfy man's wants, but to gratify his 
taste and to realize his ideals — to this we apply the singular, 
'^ Art," or the term, " Fine Arts." 

It is to the character, the sphere, and the worth of art in 
this latter sense that I wish now to invite the attention of 
this audience. And, first of all, let us fix definitely in mind 
what it is that we mean when we speak of Fine Arts. 

The distinction between fine and practical art, lies not in 
the effects produced, but in the attitude of the mind exercis- 
ing itself in the one or in the other. The aim of the prac- 
tical arts is to attain an end; the action of mind in them 

27 



28 LEGTUBEa. 

is contrivance. The aim of the fine arts is to represent a 
model or to embody a conception. The mental act is imi- 
tation or creation. 

The Maker of this Universe was, in forming it, continually 
embodying conceptions of beauty, and of grandeur, and of 
rectitude, which fill His own soul — and so His work is the 
reflection of His own mind — and as such it is a work analo- 
gous to fine art. The Greeks called it "Kosmos," ''beauty." 
Again, in building that same world. He adapted it to ends, 
with a sovereign skill ; and therein His work is analogous to 
useful art, and the Greeks again called the Creator, Demiourgos, 
^' the Artificer." In each of these He bespeaks Himself God. 
Socrates and Dr. Paley, tracing the adaptation which fills the 
creation, have come to the just conclusion that this sovereign 
skill manifests to us a mind no less than divine. Thus the 
intellect feels after Deity and finds Him. But there is 
another way, whereby the soul, finding itself in the midst of 
this Kosmos, sees God in its beauty, hears Him in its music, 
and feels Him in its blessedness, and so a more transcendental 
mind than Dr. Paley's declares that ' ' God hath not left him- 
self without witness, in that He giveth us rain from heaven 
and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and glad- 
ness." For he recognized that Deity, in thus making His 
works the representation of His own soul to our souls, imme- 
diately, without the intervention of the intellect, has given 
us a higher assurance of His being than logic could afford — 
the assurance, not of the logician's conclusion, but of his 
major-premise. 

We, then, in our practical art, imitate Deity in His work 
of contrivance, and, in our fine art, we follow the exercise of 
His mind in embodying or expressing His thought and feel- 
ing. We take such modes of expression as we have, and 
seek to embody our ideas as He did with His. Art con- 
tinually follows and models after nature — but the work of 



FINE ABT. 2& 

art is not to copy nature. It is, through the suggestions 
which nature affords, to repeat, as well as we may, those 
processes of the Perfect Mind which nature expresses, and to 
realize to ourselves, under some form, the conceptions which 
our minds, through the suggestions of nature, create. 

Remember then that fine art has not to do with the mere 
results of effort, but with the character of the effort which 
produces the result. For example, portrait painting is a fine 
art, because the painter applies his powers consciously to the 
transference, first to his own mind and then to his canvas, of 
the lineaments of the countenance before him. But daguer- 
reotyping is not a fine art, for the reason that the man who 
takes your picture, though he may be in soul a true artist, a 
Washington Allston in refinement, and the rival of Milton 
himself in poetry, when he is taking your daguerreotype,^ 
does nothing but mechanically put together certain materials 
which shall, by a way that he cannot explain, produce the 
perfect likeness. There is a sovereign artist there, but it is 
not the man who puts the plate in the camera. No machine 
can practice fine art. 

And, lest any should think it lost time or perhaps unmanly 
to be dwelling upon these embellishments of life, let us con- 
sider a little further the respective relations of useful and 
fine art to the being of man. 

It is written, <' man shall not live by bread alone." As 
we have said, the twofold character of art corresponds to the 
twofold character of man. Man is mortal and he is immortal. 
He is material and he is spiritual. As a mortal, he has cer- 
tain present wants, and appetites to indicate them, and arts of 
contrivance to provide for them. As an immortal, he has 
certain intellectual and spiritual wants, and he has aspirations 
to indicate them, and the struggle for the realization of these 
aspirations is that exercise of his being which we denominate 
fine art. ' ' This is the victory which overcometh the world 



30 LECTURES. 

even our faith" — faith, a habit of mind which keeps constantly 
before itself the conception and realization of certain ideals, 
that is, of things more beautiful and nobler and better than 
any which it has seen as yet, and toward which it strives 
with an inexpressible and a victorious longing. In such 
making faith "XhQ substance of things hoped for and the evi- 
dence of things not seen" lies the true range of fine art. 

And here let us guard against an impression which may 
be somewhat general, that the fine arts, the ^'polite" arts, 
are for those who consider themselves as moving in the higher 
circles of life, while the mechanic arts are for ordinary men. 
I should be ashamed to stand here, or anywhere, as the advo- 
cate of occupations, whose aim is to amuse luxurious idleness. 
If any will not work, neither should he eat. That is God's 
verdict, and if it is God's verdict then it is law. None but 
a hard working man is worthy of the enjoyment of fine art; 
nor is he capable of it; the law executes itself. Sometimes 
we classify men as artists and artisans — the workers at 
some handicraft, and those who w^ork at a craft of taste. This 
is a correct distinction of employments, but, as a classification 
of men, we must protest against it. Every man ought to be 
at once an artisan and an artist. He ought in all his occupa- 
tions to seek at once that which is useful and that which is 
comely. The earnestness of practical life is necessary to the 
healthful and vigorous development of the most sentimental 
spirit, and, again, the refinement of art is needful to the 
comeliness of character of the hardest worker. The man that 
despises taste will be nothing more than a bungler, even at 
rolling a wheelbarrow. And on the other hand, he that 
scorns to be an artisan, true art shall scorn him. Without 
honest and earnest desire for usefulness, art may have bril- 
liancy, but it will not be the glow of life but rather the 
phosphorescence of decay. 

Every man,then,should always be both artisan and artist, 
always aiming at that which is useful, and never forgetting 



FINE ABT. 31 

that which, in work and speech and act and thought, is 
lovely and noble, becoming and true. 

The fine arts and the practical arts run through life par- 
allel in general the one to the other, as the lark, with the 
same wing, skims the ground in quest of food and soars to 
sing at heaven's gate. They blend one with another, and we 
denominate one art useful, and another ornamental, accord- 
ing as the one or the other idea is most prominent in them. 
Thus prose belongs to practical art, because it aims chiefly 
through the intervention of w^ords to attain some ulterior 
end; still, it may also have something of fine art, consisting 
in the taseful embodiment of inward thought in sensible 
language. Poetry is a fine art, because in it the main aim 
is the setting forth in its perf ectness of the conception of the 
mind; yet poetry may also aim at a practical end and so 
become in part a practical art. 

In almost all the various spheres of human effort we have, 
side by side, a practical art and a fine art. Thus, architecture 
provides shelter for the body, and at the same time enables 
genius to express majestic or graceful conceptions. Again, 
we have the power of variation of sound, giving us the 
practical art of speech and the fine art of music. 

The practical art proceeds by coining words, which shall 
be its arbitrary signs of ideas, which, singly, shall be its 
tools, and which, taken together, shall be its machines for 
carrying on the intercourse required in its operations. These 
words are in general but cold interpreters of thought. We 
must learn what men have agreed that they shall mean, before 
we can use them or understand them. That is speech — the 
practical art. And against it is a fine art of sound. It rests 
upon this fact, that we have not only a mortal body, with 
transient wants, in the supplying of which such coarse and 
temporary contrivances as arbitrary words are well enough, 
but that we also have an enduring spirit with lasting emotions, 
and that these emotions, which belong to the nature of spirit, 



32 LECTURES. 

have specific sounds which are their natural expressions. 
And here arises music, the eldest, if not the divinest,of fine 
arts. 

The province of music is the relation of audible sound 
to inward emotion. Its aim is to find such vocal expression 
as shall so embody the feeling of one mind as to convey it, 
warm and without the intervention of any arbitrary symbol, 
to another mind. With us, so dull are our senses, and so 
indistinct are the emotions which we wish to convey, it is in 
general needful that the melody and rhythm be accompanied 
by words which shall express, according to the rules of 
practical art, the thought which fills the mind. These are 
needful to us, as an interpreter is to our understanding a 
foreign orator; but they must, like an interpreter, be an 
impediment to our reception of the living thought or emotion 
intended to be conveyed. Some of the coarser distinctions 
of emotion are marked by utterances which we can all use 
and understand. Such are weeping and laughter, the voice 
of scorn or of pity; and to more refined tastes a nicer and 
nicer discrimination becomes practicable. How far we may 
hope that in this or any other state of being the ideal of 
music may be realized, I know not. But I suppose that idea 
to be this: That every emotion of the immortal spirit has 
its appropriate intonation of sound, or of that which, in 
another world, may take the place of sound; and that these 
intonations are the elements of music, and, further, that the 
harmonious fiow and succession of emotions, in a pure spirit, 
should express itself in a like harmony of sound, rising of 
itself, like the unconscious voice of the harp of the winds, or of 
falling waters, so that it may be that, in a better land the 
emotions of pure spirits, 

*' Voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers,' ' 

and so the spirit goes spontaneously singing a perfect JEolian 
strain in its blessedness. 



FINE ART. 33 

But on the other hand, if there is a perfection of har- 
mony expressing the perfect life, so may there be also utter- 
ances of the diseased soul combining in a perfection of 
discord. 

The proper sphere of music then, being the expressing of 
right and harmonious emotion, it continually suggests to 
man the perfectness of the pure spirit and calls him to seek 
it. Longfellow's blacksmith 

" Hears his daughter's voice 
Singing in the village choir ; 
And it makes his heart rejoice, 
It sounds to him like her mother's voice 
Singing in Paradise." 

That is the office of music, that it may 

" To our high raised fantasy present 
That undisturbed song of pure concent,'* 

when, not in Hebrew nor in Greek nor in our Saxon vernacu- 
lar, but in such voice as the feeling shall, as it rises, find for 
itself, pure spirits shall pour their emotions into the ear of 
spirit. 

Again, the relation of practical and fine art may be seen 
in the language of visible symbols. For our ordinary 
expression of thought, we contrive letters of the alphabet, 
arbitrary signs of sounds, with which we represent these 
arbitrary words which we had before, and it gives us a good 
enough language to buy and sell with. 

But delineation has another and a more appropriate office ; 
and here, against the practical art of writing we have the fine 
art of painting, by which, as in sound, the image before one 
mind is conveyed to another by a natural instead of an 
arbitrary symbol. And this expression, too, is open to the 
corrupt as well as to the pure mind. It begins with the 
copying of visible objects, but its tendency is to lead the 
mind, having found its power to produce such expression, to 
form and represent also ideals of perfection. Its specific 



S4 LECTURES. 

relation seems to be to the representation of broad and com- 
prehensive scenes and actions, as that of music is to emotion, 
and of statuary to individual and fixed character. It is an art 
of great and manifest capacity for influence. But I dwell 
the less upon it, partly from a suspicion that it is yet to find 
the sphere and style of action by which it is to do most for 
the world. Perhaps it may become less imitative and more 
suggestive than it has been; may copy less and create more. 
Another form of visible expression, statuary, has per- 
liaps entered with more success upon its proper field, though 
that field may be narrower, and its influence less than may 
be in store for painting. It rose to its eminence in ancient 
'Greece, and was favored by the fact that, when it turned from 
the representation of actual men to enter the ideal world, it 
found in the Greek mythology exactly the themes which it 
desired. Working with rigid materials it is not adapted to 
the representation of varying action, nor well to that of 
composite emotion. It naturally seeks for some simple and 
strongly marked character, and then presents a form and 
<50untenance most expressive of those traits. It is rare to 
:find among men a character at once great enough and con- 
sistent enough and supported by a personal aspect sufiiciently 
in accordance with it to meet the demands of the sculptor. 
Perhaps George Washington's statue would have been a work 
to delight the chisel of Phidias himself. And here let me 
say, that there are few things which I would more desire for 
the boys of these United States than that each of them 
should have distinctly imprinted upon his mind that look and 
bearing of magnanimity which distinguishes the representa- 
tions of the Father of our Country from those of any other 
man. But ordinarily the characters of men are not high 
enough nor have unity enough for the sculptor. Therefore 
it was fortunate for the art that it sprung up amid a poly- 
theism which distributes the attributes of Deity, so that the 
artist could embody his conception of every phase of char- 



FINE ABT. a& 

acter under the form of some mythological being, which, so 
far as his material and his skill would allow, he could then 
present in marble. His ideal of art or wisdom, for example, 
he could represent in Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom; that of 
sovereign dignity and command in Jove; and Venus was his 
expression for beauty and melting tenderness; and so through 
the whole range of his ideals. 

The arts of which we have spoken are adapted severally 
to the expression of some particular phases of human thought 
or feeling. The mind has, however, a means of almost 
universal expression in language, which seems to be consti- 
tuted as the body of thought. In the use of language, we 
have a new class of arts, covering all man's activity. Its 
great divisions are the practical art of prose, and the fine art 
of rhythm or poetry. 

Prose stands ready for all the exigencies of man's prac- 
tical life, to express for him the thoughts which he has to 
express merely for the accomplishment of his ends. It is his 
obedient servant. 

Poetry, on the other hand is ready with comely expres- 
sion, with sympathetic rhythm of word and of thought, for 
his emotions and ideals, to embody and to clothe for him 
those thoughts which he loves for their own sake and desires 
to present in fitting form and attire. It is his bosom com- 
panion. 

This fine art of language has modes of expression by 
formal and regular rhythms, which we call verse, and this 
is extensive enough to correspond to the entire field of art 
which we have thus far surveyed. Music has its counter- 
part in lyric poetry, painting in descriptive and in epic 
poetry, and statuary, which presents the forms of heroes, 
in tragedy, which presents their acts. 

Again the fine art of language has forms of expression by 
unconstrained rhythms, rising and falling and changing freely 
with the eddyings of emotion or the heavings of thought. 



36 LECTURES, 

These rhythms are the material of choral measures, of anthems 
and of oratory. 

With these forms of expression, the fine art of language 
seeks for beautiful conceptions and noble thoughts, 
uniting in harmonious combinations or rhythms of thought, 
by virtue of which verse becomes poetry, and oratory, elo- 
quence. The ideal perfection sought in each case is such an 
expression as shall fully convey the blended thought and 
emotion which fill the mind. If man could perfectly acquire 
the art of language, he would find the due rhythm for his 
thought, with no more artistic effort than is involved in 
changing the expressions of the countenance, as feelings 
change. Some approach to this in unmeasured rhythms we 
have in the highest bursts of eloquence. And there may 
have been the same in sustained and regular rhythm before 
the soul lost its tune by sin, so that in Eden our first parents 
voiced their emotions to their Maker with unstudied yet per- 
fect and accordant harmony of verse and voice. 

Again, man not only utters sound, and delineates and 
expresses thought by language; no, he acts, and here too the 
arts attend him. And here too we have a practical art of 
action, which we call prudence, or a little more bluntly or 
harshly — selfishness. And we have a fine art of action, to 
which belong magnanimity, heroism, honor, sincerity, gen- 
erosity, kindness. 

This is characterized as a fine art by the constant differentia 
or distinguishing element of fine art, namely, this: that its 
aim is to conform its work to some ideal of excellence, and 
not to attain a practical end. Jesuitism, as Protestants 
understand it, that is, the doctrine that the end sanctifies the 
means, is the extreme expression of the practical without the 
fine art of life, while the Christian tenet that no gain can 
pay for doing wrong is the principle of the fine art. The 
lives of Aristides, of Phocion, of Cato, of Milton, of Chief 
Justice Marshall, are examples of this art. In a great crisis 



FINE ABT, 37 

of Greek history, after Xerxes was driven back, there is a 
story that Themistocles, the great practical contriver, told 
the Athenians that he had a stroke of policy to propose 
which must be kept secret. They deputed Aristides, the just, 
to hear it. Aristides reported back to them that nothing 
could be more gainful or more unjust, and so they rejected 
it. We have an illustrious utterance of the same art by that 
great and gallant spirit which was so long the ornament of our 
own national councils: '^'I would rather be right than be 
President." And so, too, our Washington, of whom I have 
spoken as one of the most perfect earthly models for the 
statuary, was also one of the noblest artists in this fine art of 
action. 

I have yet to bring forward a higher view of the whole 
subject of art. But first let us clear the ground of an im- 
pression Avhich may be somewhat prevalent, namely, that 
there is inhereot in the very nature of art something of false- 
hood and deception. I think that the reverse is the fact, and 
that art is really fine art, only just so far as it is true. Its 
first canon is that it must be true to its model. The statuary 
carves his marble to the most perfect likeness of life that he 
can attain. If the likeness is so perfect that you do at first 
think that it is a living form, your mistake is a proof of the 
success of the work; but such deception was not the object 
of the art. That object is not attained until your mistake is 
corrected and you are made to see that this likeness of life is 
after all nothing but cold stone. Phidias wrought of ivory 
and gold a colossal statue of Athene, which was placed upon 
the Acropolis of Athens. He intended to embody his ideal of 
the goddess. But he did not intend to make men believe 
that the work was the goddess herself. The spiritual reality 
which spectators were to see in that form, was not that a 
spirit occupied it, but this, that there is a severe, serene, 
dignified grace in wisdom, which is true, and also this, that 
a noble conception of that majestic grace had been formed 



38 LECTUBES. 

and existed in the mind of the artist, which was also true. 
The Athenians could not honor Phidias for his matchless 
Athene and Jove, except as they belicA^ed that those statues 
represented glorious images which had risen and been admired 
in his own mind before he wrought the gold and ivory, and 
that each line of majesty or grace told them truly of a vivid 
thought that filled his own mind as he carved it. And so it is 
with all art. Its power rests upon its truth. The orator has 
little sway unless he can show his hearers that he feels 
the sentiments which he utters. The poet moves none who 
do not believe that the rapture which he expresses is his own. 
And music, when we know that there is no music in the soul, 
is repulsive. The final triumph is the creation in the soul of 
the auditor or of the spectator of such an image as was in 
the soul of the artist, and that his soul be purified and en- 
nobled by that vision; an image of that exaltation whereby 
^'we, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, shall be 
changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by 
the spirit of the Lord." 

And now we are ready for the question which practical 
art may be pressing. What after all is the use of this fine 
art? We answer: Practical art has its use, and it is an important 
one, in the sustaining of the physical being of mortal man. 
Fine art has its use in the nurturing and the moulding of the 
spiritual being of immortal man. 

Here then is a serious end for fine art. It is not a matter 
of mere embellishment. It is not intended to be the minister 
of practical life, to smooth its rugged ways and cheer its 
hardships. Practical art becomes its minister; its hewer of 
wood and drawer of water, while it is engaged in doing 
earnestly the real work of life. Bear with me then, while I 
endeavor to lead your minds in forming the idea of the Art of 
Arts. It is The Art of Spiritual Statuary. 

Its material is the human nature. Its studio is in the 
chambers of the brain and heart. The ideal which it would 



FINE ART. 39 

fashion is the perfect man. Its model is the character of God. 
Its artist is each individual free moral agent for himself. Its 
means are all the faculties of man and all the surrounding 
influences which he can call in to aid him. 

This is the art which every man may and should practice^ 
laboring continually to make more comely his own nature 
and, as he may be able, that of other men. 

The work is to take the plastic character of man and 
mould it to the likeness of the character of God. Like every 
other sphere of human art it has its limitations, in which it 
acquiesces. The sculptor cannot give to his cold, hard 
marble the soft, warm life of man, but he does what he can. 
He carves it to the likeness of the most perfect form of 
humanity of which he can conceive, and then he leaves it — 
preeminent among the works of man as its original was pre- 
eminent among the works of God. So the work of the 
spiritual sculptor must at best be finite in its dimensions, and 
certain perfections he cannot approach or even conceive. 
Yet as the marble, which could not be endowed with life,, 
might still be pure as innocence itself; so, man may not be 
wise as God is wise, yet he may be merciful even as his. 
Father which is in heaven is merciful. 

To this art all other arts are merely subsidiary. They 
are only of worth as they minister to it. And here let me say 
again that all art which does not terminate in this art is 
counterfeit art. That only is true art in the highest sense 
whose ideals of perfectness exist and take effect in the inner 
heart of the artist. A vicious artist is a monster. Artistic 
skill or discernment that resides only in the eye or the voice 
or the ear is a hollow mockery of art. Be it understood, 
then, that in speaking of the relations of external art to the 
inward art we are only speaking of those artists who are 
artists in heart as well as in expression. Our position, then, 
is this, that all fine arts are or should be merely processes or 
outward phenomena, manifestations or echoes of a real artist 



40 LECTURES, 

work that is going on in the secret studio. If the sculptor 
is a true artist he is continually laboring not only to form 
his image of excellence in marble, but at the same time to 
grave those same lineaments upon the inner man. The 
painter's work is a diagram of beauty by which his mind is 
making distinct to itself that perfect grace to which itself 
would attain. Thus, as the great musician, Mozart, drew 
near his end, a stranger came and employed him to compose 
a requiem. He accepted the duty and received his hundred 
ducats, his artisan hire for the work, and the stranger 
departed. After some months Mozart commenced his work, 
feeling that death, which he was to treat, was near to 
himself. Ashe composed his life ebbed; the work was taken 
from him, and he regained his strength. He returned to it 
again, but before it was done he was gone. When he was 
dead the stranger came and received the unfinished work. 
The ducats Mozart had earned as an artisan. As an artist 
of sensible external art, he had wrought out so far his impres- 
sion of the sublimity of death and sorrow. But he had all 
the while been engaged upon a greater work of art, the 
forming of his own soul to the rhythm of that contemplation 
of death and eternity. The music that he left was only the 
echo of a song that was rising within, the tuning of his soul 
as of a noble instrument which was to be heard elsewhere. 
And so always with the true art. The ravishing music that 
we hear is not the ultimate fruit of the art, it is merely the 
attuning in the earthly manufactory of the organ that is to 
peal in the heavenly temple. 

But there are other ways of pursuing this spiritual art, 
beside the practice of what are technically called the fine 
arts. Great artists themselves must pursue it in their lives 
as well as in their art. John Milton is an illustrious 
example. He applied himself to the fullest training. His 
classical education embraced the perusal of the entire remains 
of classic literature. For he had a great end in view. He 



FINE ABT. 41 

was ^' meditating", as he wrote to his friend in the modest 
pride of young genius, ''by the help of heaven an immor- 
tality of fame." But his life was cast upon the stirring 
times of Cromwell, and as a practical man he devoted to the 
good of those times the intellectual strength and accomplish- 
ment which he had gathered from all time, even freely sacri- 
ficing to liberty's defense that eyesight to which he owed 
his accomplishment. Yet, even m his practical employments, 
he was always an artist, choosing and cleaving to nothing 
but that which is noble and honest and free. At length, 
when he was blind and the evil days came, when he could no 
longer serve the state, he returned to his artistic pursuits and 
gave ten years to the composition of the Paradise Lost. 
And here perhaps appear in fair proportion the relative 
worth of artisan and artistic effort. When his book was 
done he sold it to ''Samuel Symons, printer," and received 
five pounds upon the spot, and five pounds more two years 
after, and in eleven years more Elizabeth Milton, his widow, 
received eight pounds. That was his artisan pay for his ten 
years' work, and he needed it to buy him bread in his blind- 
ness and poverty. For his artist labor he gained that " im- 
mortality of fame " which he was so long before meditating, 
and perhaps what he had done in the inward art was a third 
proportional to these two, as much surpassing his immortal 
fame as that fame was better than the eighteen pounds. But 
it was not only in his public life that Milton was an artist. 

"His soul was like a star and dwelt apart; 
He had a voice whose sound was like the sea; 
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
So did he travel on life's common way, 
In cheerful goodliness; and yet his heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay." 

Nor need a man be a Milton in order to aspire to this true 
art. We cannot all carve marble nor write poetry, nor even 
sing nor paint, but we may all attain toward this right 



42 LECTUBES. 

moulding of soul. Every man may do it, as every man may 
be an artist without leaving his ordinary craft, for there is 
no honest work that a man can do which he may not do 
handsomely, and every work handsomely done is, so far, a 
work of taste — a work of art. A good shoemaker has a right 
to call himself an artist, a better right than some painters 
and musicians. Comeliness of appearance and attire and pro- 
priety of manners belong to fine art. He that is scrupulously 
honest in his dealings for honesty's sake is following true 
fine art. He is cultivating the character of an honest man, 
and it will stand him in good stead at a certain coming 
exhibition of these works of art. Magnanimity, generosity, 
honor, kindness are accomplishments within the reach of all, 
yet even in fine art they are of more permanent value than 
the painter's eye or the sculptor's hand. 

While we live, then, by means of practical art, let us 
devote ourselves to the fine art of making ourselves and 
others as noble and fully developed men as we can. The 
first condition of this, as of any other art, is the careful and 
distinct forming of our ideal and study of our model. They 
that have produced surpassing statues or pictures, or poems 
or musical compositions, have fixed their minds intently and 
long upon the ideal Avhich they essayed to develop. It has 
been with them in their meditation and their solitary walk 
by day and haunted the dream by night, so that whenever 
the mind might be in a happier mood or a gleam of light 
might cross it, some new or more perfect lineament of that 
ideal might be formed or traced; and then it was a cheerful 
patience which gave its months and years to the minute 
elaboration of the work which was to perpetuate that delicate 
offspring of the mind so long as the rock should endure. 

By just such diligent contemplation is the ideal of the 
perfect man to be formed. We must familiarize ourselves 
with the best specimens of human character and action. Seek 
out in history the examples of truly great and noble deeds- 



FINE ABT. 43 

Single out for companions the noblest men you know, and in 
each individual who comes under observation seek out the 
noble traits. Do not be always looking under for some 
meanness. If meanness is forced upon your notice, get 
away from it and forget it. It is not wholesome to be think- 
ing of meanness. Be in the habit of seeking and contem- 
plating whatever is fair and comely, in art, in nature, and in 
action, and let the taste thus cultivated apply itself to add 
more graces to your forming ideal of man. Dwell much 
upon characters like Washington and John Jay, or like 
Howard the philanthropist, or Wilberforce, especially upon 
the perfect model, the God-man. 

The very forming of this ideal of the true man is very 
much toward its realization; for this is not an art which must 
depend upon mechanical contrivance. When Raphael had 
formed in his mind the idea of the picture which he was to 
present, he must go into his studio and mingle his paints and 
handle his tools like a common craftsman. The will of the 
artist must laboriously direct material arrangements which 
are the condition of the embodiment of his conception. But 
in this higher art the studio itself is in the recesses of the 
mind, and the very act of forming the ideal and the very 
longing for assimilation to that beautiful likeness are acts in 
the perfecting of the work. Yet there will still be much to 
be done by patient toil. The taste is to be formed, the intel- 
lect is to be furnished and invigorated, the.thought and life 
are to be purified and ennobled. There must be a wakeful 
watchfulness hour by hour ; for every hour gives opportunity 
for the exercise of magnanimity or the indulgence of selfish- 
ness. Every employment enables us to ennoble ourselves by 
an honest endeavor to do our best, or to belittle ourselves by 
a disgraceful and lazy thought that an imperfect or even 
slovenly performance will do well enough for this time. And 
then, too, Ave may always bear a kind and cheerful or a sour 
temper and visage. The most exquisite art has not yet be.en 



44 LECTURES. 

able to produce anything so beautiful as a smile and an eye 
full of kindness coming from the heart. Every act of our 
lives, every work of our hands should be a chisel stroke in 
the elaboration of that statue. Everything that we can do 
like our Maker does so much to make us like our Maker. 

We may do much toward exalting our own character by 
cultivating a ready and full sympathy with the best feeling 
with which we meet. Choose the noble and high-minded 
side of every question. If you see another man getting 
credit worthily do not envy him, but be proud of him as a 
brother man. Rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep 
with them that weep. 

Our times promise to be rich in these means of spiritual 
culture, in suggestive meu and inspiring movement. An 
open eye and ear, an open mind and an open heart will of 
themselves drink in the inspiration. Men like Milton have 
been on earth ''like stars dwelling apart," but henceforward 
nations are to think and great subjects are coming before 
them, and we may expect that those ''mute, inglorious 
Miltons," who have hitherto been unknown, will be brought 
forward, and great men will multiply among us as the stars 
multiply when mist disperses. 

I have sought to lay before you a fine art of such a char- 
acter that when, as the doors of the studio were opened to 
reveal the work of the sculptor, so the walls of this earthly 
house shall fall asunder, there shall be revealed within a 
work of art which even the Divine artist can approve. Let 
me close by naming again the definitions of this art: 

Its material is the human mind and soul; its studio is the 
human heart and mind; its means are human faculties and 
opportunities ; its ideal is the perfect man ; its aim is to 
take the plastic being of man and fashion it to the image of 
God. 



III. 
ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. 



Ancient Civilizations. 

Ancient culture was simple in its structure, but divided 
into many diverse civilizations. Modern life is most complex, 
but all its elements are growing together into one common 
wealth of mankind. 

Civilization is the culture of man. The very form of the 
word assumes that man is not an individual but a citizen. 
Its aim is to form every man to the most complete manhood 
and to the best fitness, both of will and of skill, for that 
man's place in the community; and to form all together into 
the most fully developed and fully equipped total of 
humanity. 

Wherever, then, there is a common bond, uniting men for 
common culture and for common good, there is a civilization. 
The trite saying, that in old times the individual existed for 
the state, but now the state for the individual, contains two- 
thirds of the fact, and, stopping there, inverts the truth. 
Old communities took the barbarous man and brought him 
by will or by force into the mass of the state. Modern cul- 
ture takes the citizen and trains him toward that perf ectness, 
which will of itself fit into that crystallization of mankind, 
whose conditions and whose unwritten law it is also perfect- 
ing. We may think of old states as the academies; of 
modern Christendom as the college. jSTeither is complete 
without the universitas, the millennium, or ''the good 
time coming." The line between ancient and modern times 
is drawn by the advent of Christianity, which is the principle 
of union. The law of the old world was separation; the new 

47 



48 LECTURES. 

brings together. And each nation enters into the new, when 
it becomes, and in proportion as it becomes, a Christian 
nation. 

The whole world was built for such a history. The 
mountains and seas, and especially the deserts, which divided 
the old nations, compelled their secluded culture; and no less 
conspicuously do the modern victories over space and time 
and toil fuse men together in a whole, in which the 
wisest is the chiefest, the common interest is the interest of 
every man, and every man's good is part of the common- 
wealth. 

The world, when built, was divided by oceans into two 
hemispheres, of which one was reserved for that reconstruction 
of civilization of which we are a part; while the other was 
divided into two most unequal sections by a mountain wall, 
running from the mouth of the Indus or of the Ganges to 
that of the Rhone or the Rhine. All the great regions to the 
north of this wall were also reserved, nursing populations 
who were preparing physical strength and rudiments of 
manhood, which were to come to great use when their time 
should come, but who were not yet at school. The greater 
portion of the remainder, including all southern Europe and 
Central Asia, consists of the southern slopes, ranges and 
spurs of the mountains, and is all occupied by tribes kindred 
to one another and to us, all except the spur of Lebanon and 
Sinai, a line most peculiar in its geographical and in its his- 
torical relations, the pivot of the world. 

We have left a small circle in the center of the hemis- 
phere, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, Mounts Taurus 
and Zagros, the Indian Ocean and the desert of Sahara. Of 
this the greater part is desert, and as such almost out of the 
history of civilization. It was wisely said, in this region 
itself, that ''wisdom rejoiceth in the habitable parts of the 
earth," which would here be Mesopotamia, Arabia Felix and 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. 49 

the scattered oases of Arabia, and the valley and Delta of 
the Nile. It is a rainless region, under the power of the sun, 
which makes the uplands deserts, but covers the lowlands, 
which drink waters flowing from other climes, with a teeming 
life, thus preparing them for the hot-beds of a precocious 
civilization. This they were to pass on to their neighbors 
on the mountains, and these to those beyond the ridge, and 
they to the new world across the sea. The education of 
ancient nations was organized into two or three great classes 
of tribes, the Egyptians, Arabs, Chaldeans and Assyrians 
on the plains; and the Persians, Medes, Armenians, Phry- 
gians, Greeks and Romans on the mountains, with the Phoeni- 
cians and Hebrews between them. 

In each of these three departments we find in national 
culture the two phases which we, in modern times, have in 
the education of individuals. One man is educated by secluded 
study for professional life; another is trained for and thrown 
into business. So some nations formed their culture in 
seclusion, like the Arabs, Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, 
Athenians, Spartans, Romans; others in thoroughfares of 
nations, like Babylon, Nineveh, Media, Phoenicia, Ionia, 
Corinth, Sicily. Each is necessary; for the closet is always 
the source of power, but power must always work in public 
life. 

We have already been struck by the great reserves of 
power by which regions and races which were to be ruling 
agents in the history of culture, are kept back till their time 
should come; we shall also discern a corresponding plan in 
the use of the natural instrumentalities of education. 

We have two teachers, the eye and the ear, which have 
two assistants, the hand and the tongue. To each of these 
teachers is assigned a department in the earliest education of 
mankind — to the eye the sunny plains, and to the ear the 
breezy mountains. For a thousand years Egypt and Chaldea 



50 LECTURES. 

were building monuments or writing in hieroglyphic or cune- 
iform, while Persia and Greece were singing songs of war or 
work or worship. Let us see the working of the systems. 
Egypt and Chaldea, then, are sent to school in their earliest 
childhood, to the college of letters on the Nile and the com- 
mercial college on the Euphrates, while the mountain boys 
are left to play and sing for a thousand years more. 

It seems not unlikely that picture-writing was invented in 
Arabia and brought thence to Chaldea and to Egypt. In 
Chaldea the writing material was clay, on which impressions 
were made with the edges of a stick, making wedge-shaped 
indentations, which were combined into pictures which soon 
lost all likeness to any object and became characters in 
which the learned could effectually conceal their knowledge, 
as they did. Various systems of cuneiform were formed for 
the tribes of that quarter of Asia, all crude and obscure 
enough to defy the wit of common men and to exhaust that 
of the learned. It served some purpose, invaluable indeed to 
us, as a laborious record of scientific observations and of his- 
toric facts, but must have been a very lame help to study. 
Its chief labor was with its own grammar. 

But, in Egypt, the new culture bore great fruit. It was 
a secluded land, guarded by the desert and the sea. The 
teeming soil bore and fed an immense population. Great 
quarries gave material for building, while the surfaces of stone 
favored the use of either the pencil or the chisel, while 
the dreamy quietness of the secluded realm bred in ruling 
minds, thoughts and plans, and sought visible expression 
for them all. So Egypt is the land of monuments. Every 
thought, as well as every man, must be embalmed. The 
fields are dotted and the hills are honeycombed with obelisks, 
temples and tombs, and every temple and sarcophagus and 
burial case is covered, within and without, with inscriptions, 
and voluminous rolls of papyrus are buried with the dead. 
But all this literature gives only a kind of nebulous idea of 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. 51 

the intense instinct for visible representation Avhich possessed 
the people. The temples and tombs and obelisks are them- 
selves, as it were, gigantic inscriptions or reliefs, and so are 
the sphinxes and the pyramids. All this gives us the idea of 
a very mature people and we say, how old must Egypt have 
been before she built a pyramid? We are judging others by 
ourselves. We are of a slow-maturing race of men. It is 
but a little time since our fathers began to read and write. 
But these Egyptians were never young. They would seem 
placed in their Eden, like Adam, in full maturity. We do 
not find a series of crude preparatory works. The Sphinx 
and the Great Pyramid are the oldest works of Egypt, and 
they are the greatest and the most perfect. Modern science 
is now discovering in the dimensions, the position, the pass- 
ages, and the lines of the Pyramid of Cheops the mute record 
of scientific facts, like the place of the pole, the latitude of 
Memphis, the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of 
the circle, such as, if they are really there, as they seem to 
prove, were worthy to have a pyramid for their record. 
From the pyramid downward, Egypt seems to shrink gradu- 
allv to second childhood; like the Nile which is never so 
great again as when it leaves the cataracts. The Nile had 
grown great in the unknown heart of Africa, and perhaps 
this wisdom of the oldest Egypt is the legacy of antediluvian 
lore. If not, it is the precocity of a race which was never a 
child and whose only work is its own tomb. The Pyramid 
itself, compact as it may have been with scientific thought, 
was a tomb; and the thoughts, as well as the monarch which 
it incased, seem to have been hidden, when its passages were 
closed and its surface smoothed, to wait their three thousand 
years for the resurrection; four thousand years it is now that 
they are coming forth. 

What was the effect of letters upon Egypt? They found 
Egypt wise, did they make her wiser? Perhaps we ought 
not to expect that they would do so. It is a clime for quick 



52 LECTURES, 

maturity rather than for perennial growth. Yet, with such a 
beginning, and with such an auxiliary as visible forms are, 
especially to scientific inquiry, it does seem strange that we 
are not able to distinguish some great progress, at least in 
science, as consequent upon their introduction. The appar- 
ent want of intellectual movement in Egypt during all this 
literary activity, — or at least busy-ness,— almost raises the 
question whether a thought written be not, at least for him 
who writes it, a thought embalmed, and whether it be best 
that a man write anything till he have occasion to write his 
will. Certainly such a conclusion would be most unjust, the 
simple fact respecting Egypt being that, even at that time, it 
was time for her to write her testament. It may be that she 
would have made somewhat more progress if she had not so 
soon entered upon her scholastic age, but the world would 
not now have been the richer for it. 

A thought reduced to visible form, either in written 
word or picture or statue or edifice, if it be not a step for 
further progress becomes a limit to thought. And, as every 
expression is inferior to the thought, it may even dwarf the 
idea of the mind. This is especially true in religious 
thought, and perhaps we are to understand the second com- 
mand given upon Sinai as a divine comment upon the religious 
influence of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system. The Sphinx 
itself, the lion body with the human head, carved from the 
native rock, colossal in size, majestic and solemn in aspect, 
looking over fruitful Egypt toward the sunrise, as it may be 
the oldest of human monuments, is, to-day, one of the most 
impressive embodiments of human thought. But here their 
form of expression led their people on to the worship of images, 
growing ever more gross and grotesque, and of four-footed 
beasts and creeping things! Visible forms may be a great 
help to science, but they may destroy the life of religion. 
We do not know that Jesus wrote a word except in the sand. 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. 53 

We shall find the same association of idolatry with the 
language of visible symbols elsewhere. Babylon and Nine- 
veh were full of inscriptions and of idols. According to Hero- 
dotus, the Greeks received the names of the gods, as well as 
of the letters, from their neighbors across the Mediterranean, 
and the Persians had not image or temple or writing, till 
they learned them from the valley of the Tigris. Even 
Hindoostan seems not to have worshiped idols in the old 
Vedic ages. 

Yet the immense and intense religious thought of Egypt 
was far from lost to the world. Their view of human life as 
seen in the light of judgment after death, as unfolded in 
their Book of the Dead, is a legacy worthy of their toil and 
thought. But we ought not to emphasize the question of the 
results obtained by the Egyptians, or by the Chaldeans, through 
the use of letters. The alphabet would be in itself a suffi- 
cient legacy and monument of a nation's wisdom, even if it 
were not accompanied by evidence of other achievements of 
thought brought forth in that same morning hour which lies 
just below our horizon. That is the law of life in those 
plains of the south; a century of tense life and a thousand 
years of rest ; one man of vigor enough to move to great 
works a million of passive men, who, ^^ seeing that rest is 
good and the land that it is pleasant, bow their shoulders to 
bear and become servants to tribute." For inertness, there, is 
not the sturdy and stubborn laziness of the north. It is a 
passiveness, which finds it less trouble to toil than to resist 
command. 

We wish we could look just a little over the rolling world 
and see the young genius of Egypt in its fervent work from 
Menes to Cheops; those keen and eager minds at work upon 
problems of art, science, and life, resolute monarchs sup- 
porting their thoughts, and obedient populations embodying 
them in great works. We may compare it with the century 



54 LECTUBES. 

which invented printing, or with that which has learned to 
write with the lightning; but we must admit that neither 
the telegraph nor the type shows a genius or an inspiration 
like that which invented or developed the alphabet. And, in 
the light of such a token of the genius of that age, it 
becomes easier to ascribe the culture which appears suddenly 
with the pyramids to the enthusiasm of one generation, than 
to the droning of an hundred. 

The art of printing seems to be, and it is, the natural 
development of that of w^riting, and yet the two are in their 
operations as unlike as the worm and the butterfly. Printing 
is the most democratic writing is the most aristocratic of 
institutions, as it enables those who possess it to make and 
keep advances in science which leave the rest of men hope- 
lessly behind. So in the literary nations of antiquity were 
castes, the Egyptian priests, the Hebrew scribes, the Chald- 
eans, the Magi, the Brahmins; and on the other hand, now, 
it is the leaden type and not the bullet which sweeps away 
the barriers of privilege. Writing makes knowledge the 
prerogative of the fev»^; printing makes it the commonwealth 
of all. 

Perhaps it is not unfortunate that the Egyptian priests 
were not inclined to teach the world all their science. In 
many things half is more than all, and the greater part of 
secret things the world is wiser not to know. The Egyp- 
tians did business with the Phoenicians who, as business men, 
did not care to learn all the obscurities of the hieroglyphics, but 
they could see the value of a table of characters for element- 
ary sounds, and for numbers, and so they formed an alphabet, 
rich in what it took from Egypt and almost equally fortunate 
in what it left behind. From them the alphabet has spread 
to the Asiatic and to the American shore of the Pacific. 

The Phoenicians carried the alphabet to the Greeks, the 
people who were destined to make the most of it. But for 
centuries they found no market for it there. 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS, 55 

The Greeks represented the mountain races, who were 
forming a civilization which was not yet ready to be stereo- 
typed. From the Himalayas to the Alps kindred tribes had 
been forming culture for a thousand years before Cadmus; 
and for hundreds of years after him they used his figures only 
as they had occasion to count with a Sidonian trader the price 
of a kettle, a garment, or a slave. For the rest, their 
thoughts refused the bonds of the written word. ''The letter 
killeth, the spirit giveth life," and the natural utterance of a 
live thought is by the living breath. 

-It seems to us impossible to advance or record the prog- 
ress of man without letters as a help to memory. But the 
Greeks had nine Muses, all daughters of Memory, but none 
of them is a Muse of letters. They and the other northern 
nations had found another way of communicating and record- 
ing thought which pleased them better. They gave it a body, 
not to the eye by letters, but to the ear by rhythms. 

The method did not favor a very thorough culture of 
science, but it was not without its advantages for the culture 
of man. 

We may say that it was so, even for his early scientific 
culture; for what he did elaborate must be wrought out by 
pure power of thought and must be held by the 
grasp of his own mind, and must be told so plainly that 
another mind may take and keep it without notes; and in that 
process the other mind is also trained to a clear and vigorous 
apprehension, and when the other has the fact, he has it not 
in a note-book but in his mind. Still the main training in 
illiterate nations must have been in elements of character 
rather than of knowledge. 

Literary culture is in prose, while oral culture was in 
poetry. The former deals naturally in facts; the latter in 
enthusiasms. 

Which is of more value may depend upon the question 
whether we are to regard man as a thinkiDg mind or as a 



56 LEGTUBES, 

living soul; or whether we ask what the man knows, or what 
the man is; whether a nurture is to be judged by the amount 
of food, or by the amount of health, which it gives. Enthu- 
siasm is life and inertness is death. If the grand enthu- 
siasm which produced letters and so many other arts in 
Egypt could have continued, v\^e cannot tell what a Babel 
they would have builded. It may have been as well for them 
to rest, and leave their work to be used by other men, who 
were at the same time preparing a greater manhood. 

We might perhaps suppose that a people whose education 
is committed to bards, rather than to scribes, will be more 
liable to superstitions and extravagances. Does not such a 
conclusion forget that health is itself the greatest of all puri- 
fying agencies, and that it is death which works corruption ? 

The Hindoos, for a thousand or more years before Alex- 
ander the Great came with the alphabet, had chanted their 
sacred songs, as they made their way through the gigantic 
mountains which stand between Bactria and the Ganges. 
The serene or tempestuous aspects of nature around them 
filled them with a loving reverence for the god of day and an 
awe in the presence of the spirit of the storm. They were 
full of deep religious feeling covering this life and looking 
on into the future. From that time has come down to us a 
poetic literature, larger than the Iliad, which proves the 
activity of their minds and souls; but it speaks a simple and 
manly faith. The superstitions and idolatries of Brahman- 
ism seem to have come in with the idea of letters and of vis- 
ible forms as an aid to devotion and religious thought, 
cooperating, of course, with many other demoralizing influ- 
ences. 

During the same ages, a kindred tribe were wandering 
along the Hindoo Koosh and the Zagros from Bactria to 
the mountains of Persia. They were impressed with a con- 
flict above the wars of the elements and above their own 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS, 57 

struggles for life; with a great warfare filling the universe 
between the powers of good and of ill, a war which concerns 
man and in which man may and must bear a part; a war 
between the truth and ^nhe lie." It was a great idea, fit to 
take possession of a soul and to make it great. It took 
possession of the soul of Persia and made it great. Persian 
boys went to school to learn — not letters — but these three 
things, ' ' to draw the bow, to ride the horse, to speak the 
truth." The teachers spent the day in teaching principles of 
justice as illustrated in the every-day life of boys as well as 
men. Was that not a training for which we might exchange 
very much of the objective truth which we study in 
our schools? Such an education in civil life, harmonizing with 
the religious chants in which they honored Ormuzd, the god 
of truth, trained a nation of true men, who, of course, were 
conquerors when they came down to the plain. When letters 
and science and the craft of the Chaldeans came, their kings 
and nobles were apt scholars, so that the last days of Persia 
shoAV examples of falseness such as only an apostate from 
truth could achieve, but the Persian commons showed their 
breeding when they threw themselves in hopeless devotion 
upon the Grecian spears at Thermopylae and Plataea, at Issus 
and Arbela. 

They were able to conquer and to govern the literary 
nations, and the stability of their power and the stanchness 
of their host proves that they were not a horde of barbarians, 
nor Cyrus a savage chief, but a nation and a king, educated 
to as good manhood as Chaldean numbers or Memphian let- 
ters could have given. Still their culture was not broad 
enough to consummate the work of the old civilizations. 
The same was true of the Romans, who, during the same 
centuries, were working out in the far West their portion of 
the common problem of the Indo-European family. For all 
these tribes, the want of letters was supplied by an instinct of 



58 LECTURES, 

order, which wrought out a civilization which produced 
in India the solemn measure of their hymns and movement 
of their processions, and later their castes and laws of 
Menu; in Persia their religious chants, their principles of 
equity and the <'Laws of the Medes and Persians," in Rome 
it organized the Republic and the legion, and was victorious 
over Carthage, the representative of lettered culture, not so 
much by elements of barbaric strength as by those of dis- 
ciplined power. 

Every old nation that had a character, like every man of 
character, ancient or modern, prepared that character in 
seclusion; and then it came forth to its work in the world, as 
a living seed cannot be hidden in the earth. So Egypt had 
given letters, Babylon astronomy, Nineveh the vigor of 
empire, Persia the organization of power; Rome w^as forging 
the iron links which should hold the elements of the world 
together, that it might be pervaded by the fear and love of 
the one God which Judea had cherished. But it must be 
first brought into something like one system of thought. 

The education of the Greek nation to be the mediator and 
ultimately the choir-leader of the old civilizations is one of 
the chief wonders of history; a wonder which is continued 
by the natural adaptation of Europe to continue the work of 
Greece and that of America to succeed to that of Europe. 

Greece is a peninsula full of little valleys, and a sea full 
of little islands. Into these valleys and islands were brought 
a people kindred to the Hindoos, Persians, Romans and our- 
selves. Every family of them had worked its way along all 
the mountain road from Bactria, and here every man must 
wrest his living, every day, from the rough land or the 
rough sea. There are no great rich plains here, where the 
many can do the work and let the few do the thinking. 
Kind step-motherly nature will make a man of every one of 
them. Their toil is full of health and their land is full of 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. 59 

inspiration. Their land forbids great cities, but it requires 
villages. In these they gather when the day is done, or at 
their festivals. Of course they sing, and the full throbbing 
of their hearts forms the measure — ^not the laboring iambic, 
with which their kinsmen are climbing the Himalayas, but 
the exuberant dactylic hexameter, which is able to meet all 
the various moods of a generous soul. 

In this measure their enthusiasm and their wisdom were 
enshrined. It was better, far better for them than letters. 
It reached every man. It filled the mind and the soul of 
every man with thoughts and sentiments which were with 
him at his work and in his rest. It educated every man. It 
called out what was in every man and made it the common 
property of all. 

Among these islands and harbors came Phoenician ships, 
with the wares and thought of Egypt and the East. There 
sprung up the half oriental civilization of the heroic times. 
The Greeks then learned the alphabet and used its characters 
for numbers, and might soon have learned them as letters, had 
not their own enterprise crowded the Phoenicians from their 
seas, and the old Heracleid Greeks overthrown the institutions 
of the Pelopidae. So Greece took three centuries to pre- 
pare from foreign elements and nature its proper civilization. 
No people ever equaled them in the most decisive test of 
vitality, in that power of digestion or assimilation which is 
able to convert foreign matter into its own life. When 
their own commerce reached Egypt again, they were 
mature enough to take the alphabet and the papyrus and add 
a prose literature to the poetry which had formed the nation, 
but in all their wisdom they always felt that Homer was 
'' the wise." They felt that his verse struck the keynote of a 
life full of sympathy and full of thought and of harmony. 

Such a mind was ready to receive the results of the study 
of the older nations and form with them a literature 



m LEGTUEES. 

which is now continually inspiring our civilization, as their 
own was inspired by Homer. 

But if some old nations could do good work without 
letters, what is that to us? We cannot go back to the infancy 
of time if we would. Certainly not, and we would not if 
we could. It is better to live now than then; and one 
reason why it is better is, that the free and general culture of 
the old Greek life is so largely and so richly reproduced for 
us. Writing, when it came, was an aristocratic institution. 
It made knowledge the property of the few. But printing 
as we have said, makes it the wealth of the many, and so is for 
us what the song of Homer was, a popular education of man- 
hood, as well as of childhood, bringing to every man the 
thought of all the past— as the electrician brings that of all 
the present; and all the development of the powers of man and 
of nature knit again the muscles and the nerves, by which, if 
we have soul enough for it, we may come into the full throb 
of our larger life, the fellowship of mankind. 

Thus the various civilizations of old time, bound together 
by Roman law, blended together by Greek art and inspired 
by Christian faith, come to us as the one culture which we 
are to receive and develop into the one civilization of the 
United States of Mankind. 

Swifter than a weaver's shuttle these days are weaving 
the curtains of the Tabernacle of that Congregation. 

It is good to be living now. 



IV. 

THE GOLDEN AGE. 



The Golden Age. 

Address before the Wisconsin Dairymen's Association 

Do we think that the Golden Age is poetry, while real 
life is prose? Is that so? Or is it rather true that real life 
is poetry, and that mere prose is mere death? 

Poetry is the enthusiasm which sends through this world 
of dumb matter the throb of life. It is not just ^ 'the accom- 
plishment of verse." It is the soul, that makes the verse and 
all the while is doing greater things than that. 

Every just thought, every generous act or word, every 
thing done as well as you can do it, for the love of doing it 
so, is part of that harmony which is the true life of man. 

Prose, mere prose, drudges through what it has to do 
in the old rut; but touch the soul with life and it does what 
its hand finds to do with all its heart, every time as well as 
it can, and every next time a little better. 

Such a life is a poem and it writes itself in its works. 

What a poem is your farm, for even the wayfaring man 
to read! Its fences and its furrows are works of art; its fields 
are pictures, and as he looks over its pastures, it comes to 
him as a psalm telling how ''our Lord hath set his glory 
above the heavens, in making man little lower than angels 
and crowning him with glory and honor and giving him 
dominion over the works of his hands, all sheep and oxen, 
the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air and the fish of the 
sea." Such a picture, such a poem, if we have poetry enough 
in us to read it as the angels do, is the farmer life of man, 
God's vicegerent on the earth. 

63 



64 LECTURES. 

Shall we come to your palace and find the Queen in the 
shining kitchen, and see the work of her royal hands; the 
meat which she giveth to her household, the golden butter 
and honey which the young princes eat, that they may know 
to refuse the evil and choose the good, that even it may be a 
part of that hallowed knowledge of good and evil which is 
to reverse the doom of Eden, and which may bring back the 
lost Paradise and the days of '' Immanuel — God with us." 

That dream of the good time coming is part of the soul of 
man, and it is what makes life worth living, and it is a dream 
which is working its own fulfillment, for even so runs the 
promise, '' Your young men shall see visions and your old 
men shall dream dreams." 

And now, as we stand where the dream of the old is 
already becoming the vision of the new, it will be good and 
meet for us to take a little thought of that vision and of that 
hope which we may realize. The dream is as old and as wide 
as the history of man. It is just that deathless hope, 
implanted by Him v/ho made man, by reason of which he 
does not give up under his bondage of corruption, but bears 
up in the assurance of a Paradise which he has known and 
which he is to know again; and everywhere it is a dream of 
country life and of man's presidency over the animal world, 
and the ministry of earth and its inhabitants to him. He is 
placed in Eden " to dress it and to keep it," and he names its 
beasts. 

The Paradise of the Hebrew is the Golden Age of the 

Greek and the Roman, the time of peace and plenty and 

perpetual spring when, as Hesiod, almost the oldest Greek 

poet, sings, 

" Men lived like gods." 

And Virgil, the farmer and dairyman poet of Rome, sings, 
even in the court of the Caesars, of the Golden Age, whose 
fading image was still upon the recollections of his boyhood 



THE GOLDEN' AGE, 65 

upon the farm; of ^'The rest free from care, and the life 
that knew no guile, rich in varied wealth, and of the sacred 
worship of the gods, and reverence for parents." 

This farm life, he says, " Golden Saturn passed upon the 
earth," and " among them were the last footsteps of the god- 
dess. Justice, as she left the earth." 

So he recalls the sigh of old Hesiod: 

*' Then to Olympus from the broad ways of earth, 
Veiling" with white mantles their beautiful color, 
To the race of immortals, forsaking men, 
Pass Reverence and Conscience." 

So, 

*'Many a sacred hymn comes stealing 
Down from the Eden aisles," 

and they bring cheer though we are laboring through thorns 
and thistles, for, sweet as is the dream of infancy and of 
perennial spring, we believe in manhood and in work, and 
we feel that the thorns and the thistles are good for us, and 
that the best promise for man is that of winter as well as 
summer, of night as well as day; and yet the beauty of the 
hard work of life is the glory, shining through it, of the 
Sabbath that lies beyond, that '' promise that remaineth " 
that we shall enter into the rest of the Maker of the 
world. 

Glorious, as well as horrible, has been the Brazen Age of 
War, which we hope that we are leaving behind. Grand is 
this Age of Iron, in which we live, perfecting the machinery 
and the equipments of the new Golden Age, of the good time 
coming. But the world feels that when that age comes men 
^' shall learn war no more," nor will the best of life of that 
day be in the mine, or the workshop, or in the city, but in the 
open country. That hope man never would give up, long 
and bitterly as it has been mocked. 

Nor should we forget the honor which is due to the Silver 
Age of Money. We must have business men, and most noble 



66 ' LECTUBES. 

qualities and characters have been bred in the counting room, 
but yet we feel that in city bank or on country farm '' the 
man 's the gold for a' that." and true manhood, that '' pure 
gold like unto transparent glass," is the material for the Age 
of Gold. 

The world has waited long for that manhood to appear, — 
for those '' Sons of God." Thousands of years ago the poet 
that sung of theG^^ldenAge cried, " Oh that I had not lived 
in this Age of Iron, but had died before, or lived after it." 
We do not feel so now. We seem to feel the morning air and 
to see the morning light. But are we wiser than all the men 
before us, whose eyes have glowed with that hope and been 
disappointed ? 

In the days of Augustus Caesar, the Roman poet, Virgil, 
sang almost in the words of Isaiah, of the child to be born in 
that same year, with whom the Golden Age was to come 
again. It did not come, but, instead of it, came Ages of 
Misery. What was the matter? It was the oppression and 
the ignorance of the cultivators of the soil; the same cause 
which, for all these ages, has kept that hope of mankind, as 
unable to live as it was, by its own nature, unable to die, and 
so it has been flitting like a soul on the banks of the Styx, 
waiting for its time to pass on to Elysium. 

How should that wandering soul of man be delivered? It 
never could locate its Elysium except upon the farm, and it 
never could realize it there because the tillers of the soil were 
not the owners of the soil, and because they had not the cul- 
ture of mind and refinement of soul without which 
neither land or man can be fit for Paradise. 

Have you seen that criticism of a noted picture of ' ' The 
Sower " by J. F. Millet? It was said of the sower: " That 
man looks like a convict," and the answer was: '' He is a con- 
vict; he has been chained and manacled to the soil for 
generations." 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 67 

So Virgil, the Latin poet, who sings with such ecstasy of 
farm life, still says that, for himself, he would rather be a 
student and know something. 

Let that artist or that poet look in the face of this audi- 
ence, or let him know how in America the leading positions 
in the counting-room, at the bar, the pulpit and the senate, 
are held by the men who have been born and bred upon the 
farm. Perhaps he may think that the new Age of Gold began 
to be when the Pilgrims founded a free state in a new world. 

If Oliver Cromwell had been allowed to come with them, 
instead of remaining to liberate England and to subjugate 
Ireland, it probably would have made very little difference 
here, but it might have changed the problem with which 
England has to deal to-day. 

Two hundred and sixty-six years have not brought Eng- 
land on so far in history as sixty-four days brought the May- 
flower. Doomsday Book and primogeniture and entails and 
the peers were left behind. A state substantially free arose 
and a man was able in America to be a man, to have his own 
home and his own farm, to educate his children, to be a free 
citizen of a free state. And yet New England was rather an 
education for the new paradise than the inauguration of it, 
or shall we say rather its vestibule and the commencement of 
its preparation; for it is to come by education. 

All this education must begin and end with man. Your 
farm, your tools, your crops, your stock wait for your motion. 
If you do your best they will do their best, and when the 
year is done, if you have done your thinking and working 
wisely and well, the balance-sheet will show it by showing 
that your farm is a better farm, your equipments better 
equipments, your stock better stock, your products better 
products, but especially if it shall show that you yourself are a 
better man, able for the next year to enter upon a higher 
grade of education. 



68 LEGTURES. 

The men who began two hundred and sixty years ago that 
American experiment in the education of earth and man were 
themselves the finest product of the previous education, the 
best and the best developed bodies, minds and souls which 
the world had thus far produced. And they were released 
from the trammels of the old world and set upon a new soil 
with will and with wit to make the most of their opportunity. 
And not only had they release from old fetters ; they had the 
girding of new difficulties, the savage foe, the rigorous win- 
ter, the granite mountain, the tangled forest. They made 
their clearings in the wilderness. They planted the corn, the 
tree, the home, the school, the college, the church, the com- 
monwealth — the commonwealth they called it, and every 
Thanksgiving Proclamation closed with the prayer, '*God 
save the commonwealth of Massachusetts." It is a thanks- 
giving and a prayer for us. This Beloit of ours is in the 
heart of that Massachusetts, which, by the charter of King 
James, runs across the continent, on a line from three miles 
north of the Merrimac to three miles south of the Charles 
river, from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea. Beside it 
stretch other like lines, and here, in these free fields of the 
great Interior, they commingle, as heirs of the same promise, 
sharers in that same commonwealth. That is a good word — 
the commonwealth — that community of good which is worth 
so much more to every man than is anything which he can 
call his own peculiar property, which is worth so much more 
to every man than it would be if it were not shared by every 
other man. A man used to think himself rich if he had a 
hundred slaves. What think you of the wealth of the man 
who has a hundred thousand fellow citizens, each of them a 
free man, and all joined to him and he to them in one com- 
monwealth? 

If the commonwealth itself is the greatest of the riches it 
brings, it is also full of other wealth. It has gone on from 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 69 

the Atlantic to the Western ocean, taking possession of its 
domain in obedience to that urgent command which has been 
driving the sons of men for four thousand years, and all the 
way from Bactria to Dakotah: " Go West, young man." At 
the same time the other young man heard the call, ''Go 
East," and now they have met. So the young man has gone 
till he can go no further; the round world is rounded, and 
has he found the West? Has he been chasing a rainbow, or 
has he been pursuing a manifest destiny? He must at least 
say, ''Here or nowhere is what I am seeking." The tide 
which seeks the West has met that setting toward the 
East. The movement which began in the center of the East- 
ern hemisphere is at a pause in the center of the Western, and 
what has it found? What is this Northwest which is here 
to-day? As the young man and the young commonwealth 
found it, it was a great plain, bounded north and east by 
great lakes, south by great prairies and west by huge mount- 
ains; embraced by the mighty arms and caressed by the 
fingers of great rivers and purling streams, bearing flowers 
while it waited for the crops; coursed over by buffalo and 
deer and Indian while waiting for the herd and the dairyman. 
Xow it is a great field, bounded on the north by copper and 
iron and wheat, on the south by coal and corn, east by great 
waters and great orchards, and west by mountains of silver 
and gold; its brow and its girdle of lake and river set with 
busy cities, and its strong streams gladly turning from their 
ages of play to the higher joy of sharing the fervent and 
fruitful vvork of man. Its oak openings are changed to 
orchards, its flowery prairies to fields of waving grain, and 
especially its herds from buffalo to kine, its flocks from deer 
to sheep, its wigwams to homes, schools and churches. 

We have to do now with that dairy industry, which is 
coming so largely and so hopefully to the front as the occu- 
pation of this region, and to ask how that will bear upon the 



70 LECTURES. 

realization of the Paradise in search of which the *^ young 
man" has been so long '' going west." We note that in the 
old days, when the young man was young, he used to worship 
the cow. It was so in old India and it was so in old Egypt. 
Do you remember how it was said that when the English 
brought their Hindoo sepoys to their Egyptian war, they 
fell down and worshiped the image of a cow in an old 
Egyptian temple? We can hardly wonder at their act if the 
image was that heifer in black stone which was carved in 
the days of Cephrenes, the builder of the second pyramid, 
and which now stands in the museum at Ghizeh, expressing 
wondrously that ideal of serene gentleness, of meekness 
worthy to inherit the earth, which satisfied the soul of the 
mild Egyptian and Hindoo, as the bulls with eagle wing and 
human face stand at the portals of old Nineveh, to express 
the divine might worshiped by the men who went forth 
from those doors to shake the earth. 

Then there were the golden calves which Aaron and 
Jeroboam made to represent the God of Israel. If we call all 
these heathen idols, perhaps we may accept the Scripture 
symbols, the oxen which bore the laver of purification, and 
the bovine cherub forms which adorned the Tabernacle of 
Moses and the Temple of Solomon, and the ox which, with 
lion, eagle and man, bore the throne in the vision of Ezekiel, 
as not unfit suggestions, even for us, of the mighty, the gen- 
tle, the pure, the holy, the loving might and wisdom and 
grace and bounty which sits above, and which hath made 
man His almoner, to take from His hand the bounty with 
which He satisfieth the desire of every living thing. So, if 
we do not worship the ox that eateth grass, we will at least 
regard him as a fellow citizen of that commonwealth of which 
the presidency is committed to us. 

For what is its charter? " I will remember my covenant 
which is between me and you and every living creature of all 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 71 

flesh, * * * 2iXiA the bow shall be in the cloud and I 
will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting cove- 
nant between God and every living creature of all flesh that 
is upon the earth." 

Such is the covenant and the seal, and the promise is, 
<' While earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold 
and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall 
not cease." 

That is a good constitution for an adult world. We 
would not ask for the infantile Paradise of the Roman poet 
Ovid, when ''no sail stirred the sea, nor plow the soil, but 
content with food that grew without care, they gathered the 
fruits of the trees and the berries of the mountain and the 
acorns that dropped from the oaks. Spring was eternal, and 
gentle zephyrs with tepid breath soothed flowers born with- 
out seed, and soon the unplowed earth was bearing fruits and 
the untilled field was white with corn. Rivers of milk and 
of nectar flowed, and amber honey dropped from the green 
oaks." That is all very sweet and blessed, but we would 
rather work for our living. " The Father worketh hitherto" 
and we would work. 

We take the promise as giving conditions of the best 
vigor of manhood. We accept our office, and will discharge 
it,as we can, in justice to our wards as well as ourselves. 
And what are our wards? Are there others as well as our- 
selves for whom we are responsible? That is the question 
which the first farmer asked: " Am I my brother's keeper?" 

We will try to answer it more wisely and truly than he 
did. First, there is our duty to the soil itself, to this our 
mother earth, sacred, like the duty we ow^e to our own 
mothers. Let her not be impoverished by wasteful tillage or 
by desolating crops, or starved for want of needful food. 
Let her be richer every year, and better dressed and younger. 
How rich and how beautiful was this virgin Northwest as we 



72 LEGTUBES, 

found her, waving with grass, blooming with flowers; and 
how comely, again, in the glory of those teeming early crops. 
But the willing soil grew faint with giving much and receiv- 
ing no return. 

But what could be done ? We wanted the springs and 
little streams by which the prairie farms could keep the herds 
and flocks which were needful that the strength might return 
to the soil. There was abundant water below, but how to 
bring it to the surface ? There was on our frontier a mission- 
ary* caring for the physical as well as the spiritual well-being 
of the earlier tenants of our soil. Disabled for a season from 
his ministry, he matured a thought which, in later years, he, 
and now his sons, have developed into those engines with 
which the winds of heaven are lifting those deep-lying 
waters, not only for our fields and cattle but for others all 
across our land and in far-away islands and continents, mak- 
ing waters to break out in the wilderness and streams in the 
desert. Is it not noble to be able, in such ways, by our own 
thought and care, to bring back to our mother earth blessings 
of heaven above and of the deep that lieth under, through 
which she shall be able to put on every year a younger and 
more fruitful life, preparing the home of our children in the 
good time coming? 

We have to cultivate also the fruits of the earth. It is 
pretty to think of the children of the Golden Age gathering the 
acorns under the oaks, and with their good digestion and 
sweet content they might have made a cheery life in those 
native oak orchards which used to dot our prairies. But 
think of the orchards and the fields which are to replace 
them in the days of our children. 

We have a duty also to what we call our dumb animals, 
though if we could understand their voice as well as they 



* Rev. L. H. Wheeler, missionary to the Ojihwa Indians, and inventor of the 
Eclipse wind engine. 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 73 

earn to understand ours, perhaps we should not call them so, 
,nd who knows what communications we may yet learn to 
Lold with these our partners in that covenant of which the 
ainbow is the seal? At least we cannot say that a " brute " 
as no rights which a man is bound to respect. Make them 
our friends, give them your wise and tender care. Meet 
hat appealing home-feeling of the ox that ''knoweth his 
iwner," by giving him what shall be for him a home. I 
annot show you the aspect of that heifer image from Mem- 
ihis of which I spoke, but you, that have cared for your 
Lcrd with that kind interest which has made you acquainted 
rith them and them with you, have looked into many an 
ye which has made you understand how the Greeks should 
Lave ascribed that eye to their queen of the gods, the " ox- 
yed Juno." Give them such care and it will repay you not 
ess richly as a matter of business than as a matter of morals, 
["hey will be profitable members of our common wealth in 
arge proportion to the dividend which you give to them 
rom the income of that commonwealth. 

Next comes the care of the products which your quadru- 
>ed helpers bring to be wrought by the aptness of your 
ainds and hands. This theme will be so well treated by so 
aany experts that I have only to speak of the satisfaction 
rith which the remaining community see the phenomenal 
riumphs of the past and anticipate those of the future of the 
•Northwestern Dairymen. 

How we enjoyed to see you in your last convention 
eviewing the awards of the New Orleans Exposition— Wis- 
lonsin rejoicing in her cheeses, and in more prizes for dairy 
)roducts than all the rest of the world, and rejoicing in her 
laughters, Iowa and Minnesota, in the glow of their conten- 
ion over their butter, in which they, equal with each other, 
lad distanced all other competitors, and, with all their strife, 
vere as proud of one another, as the mother, Wisconsin, was 



74 LECTURES. 

of both. And well they might be, for what in art can be 
more perfect than the product of an Iowa or Minnesota 
creamery or of a Wisconsin dairy that I wot of? 

It is more in order for an outsider to speak of your occu- 
pation in its relation to the higher range of culture, that of 
manhood and womanhood, of the home, the family, the com- 
munity, the state. 

It has always been recognized that farm life was the most 
healthful life, morally as well as physically. 

The difficulty has been that the rural population was too 
sparse to allow the facilities for education or the intellec- 
tual stimulus, by means of which the farmers' boys and girls 
could keep up with their city cousins. Another difficulty has 
been the necessity of long and hard work for a mere living, 
leaving little time or vigor for the culture of the mind; and 
another, a desolating one in a large part of the world and 
of history, has been that the tillers of the soil were not the 
owners of the soil. The policy of our nation and the instinct 
of our people are occupying our country with small farms, 
each of which is the empire of the working farmer. 

The improvements in culture and care of land will enable 
the soil to support a dense population, especially in the 
interior, where all the land is susceptible of cultivation, so 
that the school-house and the church may be in the vicinity of 
every home. The improvements in machinery and methods of 
culture, and quality of animals, and in the intelligence and 
morality of the community will all give time and taste and 
means of mental culture. 

Will give! Do "we say? We have almost been speaking 
as if the farming population of America had been deficient in 
that regard. Let us rather say that all these things will 
enable that community, here in this heart of the continent, 
to carry on to a higher perfection that culture which has 
been growing in this land from the first. Its history has 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 75^ 

been a demonstration that an intelligent, educated and 
Christian farming community is a safe reliance for the present 
and for the future of the country and of man. 

There must be cities, commercial and manufacturing; 
but their citizens could not live except by nurture and air and 
water, continually coming in from the free and pure country. 
And our history is proving that, in a true system, the moral 
and even intellectual and business life of the city needs to be 
continually recruited from the country. There is no more 
interesting feature in American life than the healthful circu- 
lation incident to the absence of caste and the prevalence of 
education and freedom of communication. Pass along any 
respectable business street of the city and you shall find that 
its business men come from the farms. You will find the 
same if you call the roll of Congress, or of any profession. 
And, on the other hand, you will find in our minor cities and 
villages and on our farms the men who have been in city life. 
And the health of the whole is in the prevalence,on the whole, 
of the farming community, both by virtue of its numbers and 
its health, physical, intellectual and moral. The farmers of 
America have made their country free, and they have vindi- 
cated liberty for all the inhabitants of the land. They are 
going on, in the solid movement of the phalanx of their con- 
viction, against the vices that still fortify themselves in 
cities. 

We believe that year by year and day by day this popu- 
lation is growing in intelligence, wealth, morality and power, 
and in the intent to use its power for the well-being of the 
land and of mankind. 

They will be the ruling force of the coming time, and it 
is because such an association as yours is an efficient means 
of bringing on that good coming time that we all rejoice in 
its work. For henceforth the home of the farmer is the 
nucleus of the commonwealth of man, and what those homea 



76 LECTURES. 

are to be is to be largely determined by the inspiration and 
suggestion of such occasions as this. You will go to your 
home minded to make a better year than you have ever made 
before, and with new ideas as to how you will do it, and that 
purpose and those thoughts will be so much effective man- 
hood in you. 

Your cattle will feel it, your family will feel it, your 
children will do better work at school for the impulse which 
your quickened S23irit will give them at home. As the season 
opens, your farms will feel it and your neighbors' farms. It 
will appear in the plans of your year, in the first furrows of 
the spring and in the last sheaf of your harvest-home, in the 
equipments, the stock and the products of your farm, and in 
your own home. 

In the mingling of what has been the secluded life of the 
farmer, with the tides of the outside world the farmer gains 
much and gives more. Style is gained and dignity is given. 
Good taste comes to the kitchen and is more than repaid by 
good sense in the parlor. Good manners come from the city; 
good morals from the country. Intercourse sharpens the 
steel, but manhood is the steel, and manhood grows upon the 
farm, and, as w^e said at the beginning, manhood is the chief 
product of the farm. 

The farmers of America have reason to be proud of the 
prizes they have won for the products of their fields and their 
dairies. They are honored also in the prizes won by such 
farmers' sons as Horace Greeley, James G. Blaine, James A. 
Garfield, Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Webster. 

But these are merely specimens of the truth and worth of 
the strong, sound health of body, mind and soul, of the sal- 
vation, which is continually, and more and more continually, 
springing up on the farm and going into all the life of the 
commonwealth. 

Now this is a matter of which I wish to say a word just 
iereand just to you who are studying this question of farm 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 77 

products. We note marked differences between different 
localities as to this as well as other results. Some small 
farming communities have become memorable for the num- 
ber and the quality of the men whom they have contributed 
to the public life of the commonwealth, and generally it is 
traceable to the influence of some man, who is a man, or of 
some true woman, in that community, who has had the pub- 
lic spirit and the intelligence to devise and^ realize plans for 
the common education of the community, adults as well as 
children, to discern the boys and girls that should have 
special education, not so much for themselves as for the 
service they may do for their kind. What has been the 
record of your town? What will it be hereafter? 

This at least every man may do. He may be himself an 
educator, by being the best man he is able to be, doing his 
duty every time, to his farm, to his cattle, to his home, to 
his community, his state, his nation, to man and to God, and 
so he will have done a man's part to bring again the Golden 
Age. 



V. 

EMPIRE. 



Empire. 

'' Vanity of vanities," saith the Preacher, '^all is vanity;" 
and other men, ever since the Preacher's day, Trho have been, 
like him, ' ^shadows pursuing shadows" all over the world, have 
echoed his words — change, change, change, vanity of vanities. 
But did you ever mark that the Preacher became wiser, that he 
discovered that there was reality, and such reality as God and 
God's commandment and God's fear and God's judgment, 
and that in these was the whole of man ? So this is his con- 
clusion of the whole matter, Reality of Realities, all is 
Reality and that Reality is God. 

So say we, Vanity of Vanities? Vanity of Vanities? 
Naught is Vanity. Reality, substantial, eternal, fearful 
reality pervades and imprisons or glorifies all. 

Nowhere has this continual song of Vanity been sung 
more continually than in the department of thought which 
we consider this evening. Empire. History reads like the 
continual obituary of dead empires. The world's poetry is 
their dirge. The soil of the earth is a cemetery of empires. 
Old mounds in Asia cover ruins of gorgeous palaces. The 
king who built the largest pyramid of Egypt is only recog- 
nized by a chalk mark, casually left upon a stone by one of his 
workmen. In ancient Etruria and in the primitive forests 
of America alike, are stupendous ruins of powers unknown 
to us. Is it not true, then, that the empires of the world are 
vanity ? 

Certainly there is no more imposing fact in history, none 
which more illustrates the godlikeness of man, than this of 
empire: that a word spoken in Shushan, the palace, shall 

81 



82 LECTURES, 

carry trembling or joy over a hundred and seven and twenty 
provinces; that a stroke of the pen in London shall be fol- 
lowed by cannonading upon the Baltic, the Black, or the 
China Sea, shall be obeyed at Canton, at Calcutta, at the 
Cape of Good Hope, at Gibraltar, at Belize, at Quebec, at 
Vancouver's Island, in New Zealand and Australia. This 
ubiquity of man's will, is it vanity ? Does it rise and per- 
vade and search the earth with dominion like the sun's light, 
only to pass away and leave darkness? 

No! Not so! Neither sunlight nor empire passes away 
and is lost in mere night. No day that God has made — no 
empire, that is by legitimate right an empire, ever passed 
or can pass away in mere defeat or vanity. But each before 
it left the earth has united itself with v/orks that never shall 
die. It lives still in influences permanent, ever advancing and 
victorious. 

Rome fell. But the influence of old Rome is broader to- 
day than in the days of Trajan. Roman law is more a law 
to more men, than it was when Roman lictors carried the axes 
before the Consul. 

Oliver Cromwell died and Richard Cromwell, his son, 
succeeded him in the title of Lord Protector of England. The 
government went on for a time under the system of the father. 
But when it was found that the hands of the hero no longer 
held the reins, England was no longer protected. Anarchy 
and royalty came in again. Now v/hile the protectorate con- 
tinued after the death of its founder, who was the true 
protector of England, was it Richard in the office, or was it 
still Oliver in his grave? 

The essence of empire, then, is actual command, real 
power. In the theory of the thing, the title or the ensign is 
nothing. The emperor — imperator, commander — is he whose 
eflScient will and thought commands and it is done. No man 
is truly an emperor except by virtue of some command, which 



EMPIRE, > 83 

is in him by the prerogative of nature. He has some 
thought in him, which by its own truth will command the 
minds of other men, or which so possesses his own soul as to 
give it a greatness and force which human souls, not magni- 
fied and fortified by like living thoughts, have no power to 
withstand. 

The same is true of imperial nations. Whatever people 
has enjoyed true empire has gained, and holds it by virtue of 
some individuality of its own, some forming thought or 
principle, which was in it a source of organization and of power. 
And so long and so far as that thought or that principle 
continues and extends its power, proceeding from that im- 
pulse, so long and so far extends the empire of the man or 
the nation which proclaimed that command. 

Philosophically, then, and truly, he only is an emperor, 
who has a command to give. And empire is only the 
dominion of an idea or principle, the obedience to the com- 
mand which the emperor, man, or race has given. And so 
long as that command rules mankind the empire continues, 
though the lips or the city from which it went forth be buried 
beneath the soil of centuries. That Cyrus or Xineveh are 
gone is a matter of sentimental pathos. If the work they 
did in reclaiming man from anarchy had perished, that would 
be a cause of solid concern. Those oriental monarchies have 
passed, but their law continues. Men traveling in those 
countries now, wonder at the stable forms of society there. 
Probably if we knew how to dig beneath the surface of 
national mind, as Layard could dig into the mounds at 
Nimrood, we would find, upon the foundations of that society, 
as he found on the alabaster walls of the Assyrian kings, in 
arrow-head characters, the laws of the old conquering race of 
Nimrod. When another empire succeeded them, their work 
and so their true empire was not destroyed, but only another 
came to build upon it. 



84 LECTURES, 

Whatever, then, of truth and principle was in those ancient 
eastern monarchies is still in being and in force. What that 
truth was we may know better when more arrow-head in- 
scriptions have been deciphered. We may however assume 
this: That no great range of ideas could be expected from a 
race who expressed themselves in action and in literature with 
heads of arrows. One idea seems appropriate to them — that 
of command and its correlative, submission. And these seem 
to have been so well impressed upon those regions that the 
obsequiousness of the servant or the armed independence 
of the spearman seem to be the only conditions of man 
there. The nations have only changed dynasties ever since. 
From Belshazzar to Cyrus or from Darius to Alexander was 
not more of a change for them than in England from a 
Tudor to a Stuart. The mastership of the arrow king, of 
force, is still dominant there. 

Perhaps those nations, unable as they are to live without 
a king, are a great example of the permanence of empire in 
this way. Nimrod and his successors commanded them to 
obey, and now they have so learned obedience that they must 
have a ruler. The throne stands in their souls, even when 
no monarch can be found to take it. 

If indeed the mummy of Nebuchadnezzar has been raised 
from his grave by the modern searchers of ruins, he comes 
up among a people who have not forgotten his law. 

But it is time to turn from him and his people and analyze 
our own civilization and see whether our liberty has thrown 
off all empire. 

We shall find that we live under a concatenation of 
sovereignties — that we are all encompassed in a chain-mail of 
command, and indeed that such subjection is a necessary 
condition of our liberty, such as it is, and that the extension 
of such subjection to the yet unrhythmized parts of our being 
is the necessary means for our further emancipation. 



EMPIEE. 85 

I say, then, that every one of us is to day a subject of 
many empires; for empires may co-exist. Every several 
strand in this glorious robe of civilization which covers us, 
is a commanding word that has been uttered by some man — 
and its power, as a strand in that mantle, is empire. 

For, if the essence of empire is command, power over man, 
it is manifest that the term is applicable to all the range of 
human thought, action and character, not only political, but 
also intellectual, social, religious. 

Let us think a little of the national empires which are our 
bonds, and then of some of our individual emperors. 

That we are under the Roman empire has already been 
said. That authoritative spirit of law, which walks the 
earth here more than in Italy, is clad in the toga of the Eter- 
nal City. 

We are under the Greek empire. This spread over the 
world before and simultaneously with that of Rome, ruling 
minds as Rome ruled bodies, and so it does now. In thought, 
and in intellectual taste, in art, and in quick life, we still 
obey the canons of Athens. 

When these were both in their widest extent and power 
the Christian element came in from Judea to claim dominion 
over the souls of men. And its sway was acknowledged. 

Thus at length, under Constantine and in the central focus 
at Byzantium, Constantinople, the three great principles of 
empire which had held separate sway for so many centuries 
were united, and that union, so effected, announced what 
was true before, that the work of each was done. The Jewish 
Theocracy, the Greek Philosophy and Roman Authority had 
borne their distinct fruits and it was time for a new system 
of development, in which these should still have their sway 
in the form of principles lying in the foundations of all 
government and society, but no longer on the surface, fight- 
ing for a foothold. 



86 LECTURES. 

Add to these that we are still under the British empire. 
How great a proportion of our laws, our maxims, our beliefs, 
our thoughts and our whole system of life came and is coming 
every day across the ocean! And how rich we are in it all! 
In many things we ought to own and to boast our allegiance 
to British thought. We have declared our independence, but 
in nothing have we shown ourselves more thoroughly Britons 
to the heart's core, than in our Declaration of Independence, — 
an act conceived in the very spirit of King John's barons and 
King Charles' Parliaments and carried out with the very heart 
of Cromwell and Russell. We are free from the outer rule of 
England simply by the inner law of Englishmen. 

*' We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spoke ; — the faith and morals hold 
That MUton held.'' 

We find ourselves, then, willing subjects of Jerusalem, of 
Greece, of Rome, of England. Many forgotten as well as 
known nations have reached us by principles which they hewed 
out with toil or wrote with their blood. We obey the law 
of many empires. 

Now let us see some of our Emperors. 

For the fountain head of all human power is, and needs 
must be, in some individual mind. In its first springing, it 
is the dim rising of a single thought in such a mind, which 
grows in that mind, and pervades it, and fills it, and makes 
it great, and gives it might and goes forth from it, first as 
influence over a few, then as a guidance to more, then, if it 
be great enough, as government to many, till finally it 
stands forth as law to man — law reaching on toward univer- 
sality and eternity, in proportion as it is a true law for man's 
nature. 

Politically, there are now in Europe three states which 
bear the name of empires: the Russia of the Czar and 
the Austria and Germany of the Kaisers. 



EMPIllE. 87 

But what is this ^ ' Kaiser " which names the powers? 
<< Kaiser" is Caesar, and Caesar is the proper name of no 
Hapshiirg, of no German sovereign, of no man who inherited 
royalty, but of that Caius Julius Caesar, whose commentaries 
boys read in school — a Roman citizen, senator, and general, 
of the age before our era: the victor of five hundred 
battles, taker of a thousand cities, slayer in Gaul alone of a 
million of men, and conqueror finally of his own country, 
Rome itself, and so master of the world. But he was no mere 
conqueror. He was a man of letters and science, an orator, 
and a statesman. In a brief and troubled ascendency, he 
found time to initiate the organization of a great chaotic em- 
pire, in the same spirit of true command in which he regu- 
lated the calendar, and gave us what our almanacs even now 
call the '' Julian" year. 

He was a man who had capacity to gain command, and, 
when he had gained it, he had a command to give, and so, 
though he refused the old title of Rex, King, and took only 
the Roman title of Imperator, general or commander, he made 
his own name of Caesar synonymous with rule over nations, 
and his title of Imperator lives now in our word. Emperor, so 
that not only Francis Joseph of Austria, but we, in our theme 
of this evening, are but '' rendering to Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's." 

In the achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte, we have had, 
in our own century, the rise of a true empire; a command 
gained and discharged by a mind and spirit competent to do 
it; the compeer of Cyrus or of Julius Caesar in manifold 
capacities of body, mind and spirit, organizing command, or, 
perhaps we may say, developing itself in empire. The 
effect, as we see it, is amazing; but, when we study the cause, 
that effect appears simply necessary. I need not speak of 
the traits which won that command, the military genius, the 
power over men, the ambition, the energy, the will, the en- 



88 LECTURES. 

durance; and I have not time to speak of the higher imperial 
qualities which displayed themselves in the exercise, organiza- 
tion and administration of the empire. 

The man, overwhelmed by strength, was Dorne like Pro- 
metheus by Might and Force to a rock of the ocean. But his 
empire was fixed in the soul of France; and it stood and in 
wonderful strength, against the two mightiest things in the 
world — against the spirit of loyalty and the spirit of liberty — 
an unnatural position and one which must fall. But while 
that has in large measure fallen, there is still left a permanent 
empire of Napoleon in sentiments and principles governing 
men. 

But we have other kings than Caesar, many that we 
know, and many .that we do not know, whose laws nevertheless 
are living stones in our structure of social order. Dimly 
and vaguely discerned in the mist of antique fable and yet 
secure upon thrones forever, sit Minos, the old sea-king of 
Crete, who with Aeacus of ^gina and Rhadamanthus of the 
Cyclades were named by Greek mythology as judges in the 
'^Land of the Hereafter," because in their day they were law- 
givers and just judges of men. Beside them sit Saturnus 
and old Janus, who ruled the golden age of Italy; and Her- 
cules stands by with mace and lion's hide — champion of 
afflicted right in a savage age. Then there is Odin or Woden, 
the old chief of our northern ancestors, and we may well 
believe that his law has come down to us, when his name 
comes again every Wednesday. 

So we come down to Numa and King Arthur, to Solon and 
King Alfred, to Roman Decemvirs and William the Conqueror, 
and so many more, who in earlier or in later times, from the 
throne, the tribune, or the bench, have first pronounced laws 
which have become fixed rules of our lives. And with them 
should be classed in honor, for they are with them in com- 
mand, those men like Demosthenes and Milton, who have by 



EMPIRE. 89 

their voice or pen urged upon the general mind of men prin- 
ciples of nobleness or of human right and fixed them as con- 
victions, and so as laws for men. 

In a real crisis of our Union stood Daniel Webster in the 
Senate of the United States to defend the Constitution against 
the assault of nullification, which in that generation, who 
tnew not Washington, was a real danger. When he stood 
forth, its friends were in dismay; as he spoke, they grew 
strong, for they felt, as his words went forth, the walls 
that had been shaken growing firm, becoming rock, becoming 
adamant. He sat down in a victory than which the world 
has never seen one more momentous, not at Marathon, not at 
Waterloo, for that speech had made the Union strong again. 
His words ^'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and 
inseparable," were words which he had made true. His 
deep voice ceased in that hall. The assemblage recovered 
from the overpowering impression and dispersed. But the 
power of his words was but beginning; they are now the 
strength of these pillars in which we confide. We tread 
upon his ashes — and sometimes we may have said ^'Ichabod." 
But let us remember that his ashes are the firmness of the 
soil upon which we tread; that it is by the power which his 
words have given that our republic has that stability which 
enabled it to do the truth when the crisis came in which 
the orator himself quailed. If Seward and Sumner 
and Lincoln and Grant were our leaders to a yet higher 
national nobleness, let us remember, v\^ith thankfulness to 
God, that their leadership was possible only upon the basis 
of his. Daniel Webster has an empire to endure w^hile 
America endures, that is, we hope, while time endures. 

We may come now to a brief summary of the Principles 
of Empire. 

The foundation of Empire is laid by the Creator in the 
nature of man. So it was at first, when man was made full of 



90 LECTURES. 

want but surrounded by wealth, full of weakness yet full of 
capacity, needing guidance to take that wealth and to 
develop that capacity. It is more so now that man is fallen, 
so that he needs to be extricated from his new as well as his 
original disabilities. 

Every man's humanity is a greater part of his being than 
his individuality, and his individuality becomes great in pro- 
portion as it drinks in, and unites itself with the greatness 
of humanity. 

Mankind, then, commencing life with this being made up 
of wants and capacities and thus social in nature, must either 
remain forever feeblest of the feeble and poorest of the poor, 
or men must rise together toward the greatness of being set 
before them ; and this rising must be by mutual help and mutual 
guidance; and all help implies service and all guidance in- 
volves command. 

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, are words which express 
great truths. But liberty which knows no law, equality which 
knows no leadership, fraternity which knows no elder brothers, 
are nihilism and chaos. 

In this mutual dependence of man, then, and in our com- 
mon wants, is the foundation of empire. We said that help 
and guidance are essential conditions of common progress. 
Guidance is leadership, and leadership is the radical idea of 
empire. Let us illustrate in its simplest form the nature and 
true spirit of empire. 

In traveling alone I come to the border of a wide prairie, 
not knoAving how to find my way over it, and I find a man who 
knows the landmarks and induce him to guide me. He guides 
me, and so is my commander; he helps me, and so is my ser- 
vant, and we go on in pleasant human fellowship in our 
mutual dependence, in human liberty, equality and fraternity. 
But by and by a spirit of independence arises, and I say to 
my guide, '' I will not be led by you!" and he retorts, "I 



EMPIRE. 91 

will not be your servant! " and there we stand — he with his 
useless knowledge, and I with my useless money — but each 
independent, and useless and helpless. 

A whole man will go on, doing duty to God and man, 
seeking first the favor of God and second that of man, and 
after that there will not be much room for the consulting of 
any merely individual conceit. If he opposes men, it is in 
love to humanity and to God and not in love to himself. 

Taking, then, mutual dependence as the law of the prog- 
ress of our race, and the frank recognition of that depend- 
ence as entirely honorable and only human, we find in that 
law the basis of empire. All advance into the unknown 
future, toward the better country, lies through unexplored 
regions of thought and truth, and we need guides. There is, 
however, this difference between the guide of an individual 
upon the prairie and the guide of mankind into new truth. 
The guide of mankind represents humanity as a whole, and 
so is clothed with some of that authority which mankind has 
over individual man. Here are three parties. First; the great 
community of mankind, of which each individual is a mem- 
ber, as the hand is of the body. Second; the leader set forth by 
this community as the organ of its authority. Third; the indiv- 
idual, who owes to this leader the same obedience, within the 
proper sphere of his action, which he owes to the community. 
It is just the temporary authority of the general of an army, 
the dictator of a state, the pilot of a ship. 

Authority, then, of ruler or of state, of teacher or of 
sect, is binding so far and only so far as it speaks the voice 
of God or the voice of mankind. Ultimately always the 
voice of God, for <^ Vox populi Vox Dei." Whatever right 
humanity has over the individual rests upon the laws of Him 
who made man. '^ The powers that be are ordained of God," 
and their charter is written in the nature of man. The ob- 
ject of them is the progress, the improvement of man, not 



92 LECTURES, 

the mere keeping of order. A ship at anchor needs no pilot, 
much less does it need a pilot when it merely lies in timber 
about a shipyard; so barbarism needs little government, ex- 
cept for the purjDOse of rising from barbarism, but all devel- 
opment of man, individual or collective, requires law, and 
law implies a law-giver. 

Every legitimate empire, social or intellectual, is legiti- 
mate by virtue of its maintenance of some true principle 
which is valuable to mankind, and every new empire is new 
in that it brings some principle, not before in force, but 
adapted to give new strength and development to man. 
Lycurgus in Sparta found a people of no special note among 
other Dorians, and he gave them a military organization, 
through which they became the strongest state in Greece. 
Mohammed rose among the Arabs, a vigorous race, but a race 
who, in their old Ishmaelite independence, had never been a 
jDOwer in the earth, and he gave them a strong common 
thought, religious and political : ' '- There is no God but God, 
and Mahomet is the prophet of God," and they were sud- 
denly the only living might then in the world. The power 
which was there was the power given by the truth, by the 
great thought of the one God as our God, — that which was 
the power of the Hebrew state, of the Christian religion, of 
Luther and the Puritans, — the thought in its nature most 
victorious, because most fundamental and mighty of all 
human thought, but one which man's depravity is always 
effacing, and so weakening and belittling man until some 
new proclamation of it shall awaken him again. 

But there are many principles which may have such power 
over man as to become principles of civilization and of 
empire. The strength of the empire of old Rome was in the 
principle of martial law imbedded in the old Roman mind, 
and when the state became degenerate, so that individual 
Romans ceased to apply such law to their own characters, 



EMPIBE. 9a 

Julius Caesar arrested the dissolution by substituting martial 
law, personified in his cohorts, for the martial law which had 
before had its throne in the public heart, and so his was in 
form an imperium, a military command. 

Now see the Greek principle of empire and the Greek 
emperor. Who was the man that gave direction to the 
common national development of Greece ? 

The Greek emperor is Homer. 

He led the nation as David led his flocks, by the harp. 
That rhythm, continually resounding in hall and in hut, in 
market-place and harvest-field, in solemn paean and in merry 
vintage song, became a law of common development. That 
was a thoroughly free empire, the best human example of a 
'^ Royal law of liberty," a common movement in obedience 
to a law which every man spontaneously follows, and thus 
a genial human law, calling out and not repressing the pow- 
ers of the mind and man, and so its fruits were developed in 
individual greatness, blending in national greatness. We see 
its power in contrast with that developed by the oriental civ- 
ilization, that arrow-head civilization which brought together 
armies of millions and scourged them into battle, in the 
wreck of the great Persian invasions at Marathon and Sala- 
mis, and in the fall of the whole Persian empire before the little 
army of Alexander, 'Hhe king of Grecia;" and it was the 
same power that developed itself in all the art, literature and 
philosophy of Athens, though Phidias and Socrates and many 
more who developed new truths and art, were emperors too, 
but all of the dynasty of Homer. 

Nor indeed was Homer the founder of the empire. That 
honor would belong to whoever may have first incited that 
national spirit of song. Yet Homer is a true emperor for the 
Greeks by this title, that by his genius in the direction of the 
nation's want and desire, he made himself the leader of all their 
chorus, of voice, of thought, and even of religious belief. 



94 LECTURES. 

He was elected by the vote of men's instincts, expressed in 
song following his rhythm, as Cyrus by the vote of men's 
wills, expressed by spears, and George Washington by the 
vote of men's hearts, expressed by ballot. Each holds his 
power by some popular election, and bears his appropriate 
insignia and sanction. In Homer's empire the rewards were 
garlands; the penalties, hisses and neglect. In that of Cyrus 
they were satrapy and crucifixion. In that of Washington 
they are freemen's shares in a free commonwealth. 

In the whole subject we discern these principles: Em- 
pire is founded upon some want of which man is conscious — and 
the emperor is he who can lead to the supply of that want. 
His title is his ability. His election is the recognition of 
his leadership. What we generally term the duration of an 
empire is merely the period while its principle is struggling 
for ascendency. Its real empire begins when the victory is 
sealed, the army disbanded, the watchmen discharged, be- 
cause the law is written in the hearts of men. And so the 
field is open for the struggle of a new principle. 

It is time now to show the relations of the idea of empire 
to those of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. 

To Liberty, it stands in the relation of the necessary 
means. 

Humanity at the outset was in bondage — thoroughly un- 
able, by reason primarily of its ignorance, of its weakness, 
of its want of development, and after that still more fatally 
by its selfishness. This is the substance of the bondage 
under which the creation groans, and all the history of em- 
pire is the history of the warfare of humanity for deliverance 
from that bondage. Every true emperor was the captain in 
some enterprise toward that deliverance. He helped man to 
establish some law by which his nature could be redeemed 
from its chaos. He brought forward some truth, a word of 
God made to give strength to mind, or taught some sentiment 



EMPIRE. 95 

to raise the nature from the ground. Leadership, so long 
and so far as it leads man to truth and strengthens and organ- 
izes his nature, manifestly leads him toward liberty. When it 
does this no longer its work is done. If it restrain his ad- 
vance it becomes tyranny. In either case it is time for a change. 
And, as before the right of the king was divine inasmuch as 
he was doing the work of God, so now the right of revolu- 
tion is divine, doing the work of God. Each in its place is 
a stage or a step in man's advance toward true liberty, deliver- 
ance from his disabilities. 

How does the idea of empire stand related to that of 
Equality? 

The truth which lies under the doctrine of equality is this: 
that every man who has a mind and a soul has, in the fact 
of his manhood, a worth which renders insignificant the 
difference between any one man and any other man, and so 
he has a claim to an equal dividend of the common good of 
human society. The poorest man is entitled to the same 
protection of the law as is the President of the United States. 
The equality of man, then, is something far deeper, both in its 
ground and in its rights, than the accidents of talent or wealth. 
"We call a king high in station and a servant low, but which 
of these is the emperor? The title of leadership lies simply in 
the fact of greater service. The command is simply a duty 
done for the time, for the general good, and not a prerogative 
or private good taken by one from the common stock. The 
pilot of a ship has a right to require the work of the ship's 
boy, and so has the ship's boy a right to require the skill of 
the pilot, and each has an equal right to be borne in the ship 
and brought safe to land. The guiding the helm is not so 
much the prerogative as the duty of the pilot. And so in all life. 
The man who has the know^ledge, or the thought, or the capacity 
by which he might guide and benefit other men is false to his 
duty of service, if he does not bring it forward for the good 



96 LECTURES. 

of those who have the same right to help and to salvation as 
he. Herein then is that saying fulfilled, ''Whosoever will 
be chief among you let him be your servant." 

This brings us to human Brotherhood as manifested in em- 
pire. What brotherhood would that be, in which on^ should 
refuse to guide another when he might, for the good of the fra- 
ternity, saying, ''Am I my brother's keeper? " This sharing 
of advice and direction, of thought and defense and develop- 
ment, is most peculiarly the province of brotherhood. And 
he who renders it most is most our brother. All imperial 
influence necessarily involves, on the part of him who ac- 
quires and holds it, the giving of himself to the service of the 
whole; and in proportion as he loses himself in the whole, 
or in the truth which is to help the whole, is his legitimate 
command. It is when a great soul goes forth and unites 
itself freely with the soul of mankind, that human souls flow 
back to it. And this confidence in mutual sympathy is the 
necessary condition of all real and just empire. The Czar 
is the father of his people and their love and honor for him is 
that of children. The great illustration of the necessity of 
the idea of brotherhood in true captaincy is one which I have 
not hitherto dwelt upon. It is the purest example of all 
principles of perfect rule. Our Maker himself, when he 
would be the Captain of our salvation, took our own nature 
and in all things was made like unto his brethern, and so He 
died for us, and " therefore, is divided to him a portion with 
the great." 

Now let us glance back and see what Empire is and what 
it is for. 

An emperor, an imperator, is not a civil but a military 
authority, and empire is an organization of martial law, a 
dictatorshij), holding men together until they can grow 
together in that living whole which is the greater self, that 
so Ave may pass from the savage to the civilized life; from 



EMPIRE. 97 

the law of will to the law of good will. It begins with 
Nimrod, hunting and ruling men by his spear. Then springs 
some rudiment of law, especially with the northern races; and 
the Persians, the Spartans, the Romans form peerages or sen- 
ates which are themselves little republics, but domineer with 
empire over subject populations, tribes or nations. So grew 
Rome until her Senate ruled the world. When that Senate 
was no longer able to hold the empire, up rose Julius Caesar 
and grasped the reins, which have passed down from his hands 
to those of the Czar Nicholas and the Kaiser William. 

He did well to refuse the name of king and take that of 
emperor. For as soon as his empire made peace throughout 
the world the King was born in Bethlehem of Judea. Other 
preparations for the Kingdom had been going on before. 
We have spoken of the power and dominion of great thoughts. 
That greatest of thoughts, the one God, had been spoken on 
Sinai, and made the Hebrew nation the power which it is even 
to-day. It was spoken again by Mohammed and what 
an empire it holds in the East! and again by Luther and 
Calvin and with what a might it is encircling the earth! 
We have called Homer an emperor, but long before Homer was 
born, when Jove thundered from Olympus, Greek fable 
brings the song of the Muses from Pieria at the foot of 
those ancient mountains, beginning that strain of harmony 
which was to imite with the Hebrew awe and the Roman 
law in the moral bond which was to hold the nations in the 
better time. 

To-day the armaments of Europe perpetuate the legions 
of Caesar. To-day America presents a commonwealth with 
scarce a soldier. What shall be on the morrow? If our 
hopes shall be fulfilled in the Commonwealth of Mankind, 
let us not forget what Empire has done for the world. 



VI. 

SOCRATES AS A TEACHER. 



Socrates as a Teacher. 

We study this evening a teacher, who began to teach 
more than two thousand years ago, and who is teaching still. 
His school is larger to-day than ever before, and it must 
increase so long as the fellowship of men that know and love 
the truth shall go on toward embracing all mankind. 

Socrates was born near Athens about 469 B. C. His 
early and middle life were in the glory of the age of Pericles, 
when Athens was the center of the life of the world, of its 
wealth and especially of its intellectual activity; and his later 
years were at the time of the struggle and fall of Athens in 
the Peloponnesian war and her rising again from that fall. 
He was not in public life; nor did he establish any great 
institution of learning. He simply went about the streets, 
conversing. The Athenians were the quickest wits of all the 
world, and all the rest of the wit of the world came into the 
same vortex, and every wit was at its wittiest there. Athens 
lived in the open air, and along its streets and public places 
might be seen throngs all intent to tell or hear some new 
thing. Among them was rising that architecture which 
crowned the Acropolis and spread a robe of beauty over all 
Athens. They first saw the statues of Phidias, and heard 
the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, 
laughed at the comedy of Aristophanes, and listened to the 
eloquence and felt the statesmanship of Pericles. 

Athens, too, was full of young men, brilliant, high-born 
and bred, wealthy, and ready for any influence which might 
bear them to greatness or to ruin. Greece, far and wide, 
had been for a century developing rhetoricians and philoso- 

101 



102 LECTURES. 

phers, and now they all thronged to the center of thought, to 
vend their accomplishment. They were the sophists, the 
teachers of the age. Coming to a vain generation, they 
taught vain accomplishments, whose vanity is kept in memory 
by our definition of the word sophist. But there were among 
them splendid orators, with magnificent adorning of person 
as well as of words. And they sold their wisdom at high 
rates. Among them appeared another; a man grotesque in his 
aspect and appearance, plain, if not careless, in his attire, 
going about and questioning everybody, always so humble 
and respectful that no one could refuse him an answer, and 
one simple question would lead to another, until, before he 
knew it, the wisest man was helplessly beyond his depth. So 
that examiner went to statesmen and orators and philosophers, 
and to all men of pretence, and he turned them inside out, to 
the infinite amusement of the attentive crowd. Under 
it all there was a conviction and a moral purpose, 
which was taking hold of some choice spirits, but, necessarily, 
many influential men were greatly offended. Meanwhile the 
sophists, against whom he protested, had educated a corrup- 
tion and infidelity, which wealth and ease had begotten in 
the higher classes, which alarmed the orthodoxy of Athens, 
and Aristophanes, the comic poet, held them up to the 
laughter and indignation of the people. Unfortunately it 
fitted his purpose of ridicule to introduce as their representa- 
tive the grotesque figure of Socrates and his face, which repre- 
sented in real life the comic mask of Silenus, the drunken 
comrade, the Jack Falstaff, of their god of wine, Dionysus. 
Aristophanes may only have intended sport, but the result 
seems to have been that the people laid upon Socrates all the 
sins of the age. He was accused of impiety and of corrupting 
the young, and, refusing to defend himself by the arts of 
Attic courts, was condemned and died, in the refined Attic 
way by a draught of poison, at the age of 70, in 399 B. C» 



SOCRATES AS A TEACHER, 103 

So he died by judgment of his fellow-citizens, after 
seventy years of life, on conviction for perverting the young, 
for malpractice as a teacher. And yet his fame as a teacher 
has lived and come to us. 

His pupils appealed from the verdict, and ask us to 
judge whether he was competent to make his companions 
better men. 

If we are not merely to prove Socrates not worthy to die, 
but to justify the honor which the world renders him, we 
must find some cogent reason which escaped the discern- 
ment of his judges. 

The world has known one other, who, living in private 
life, and speaking words of truth and love which con- 
victed men of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, had 
died the death of a malefactor but has been justified by the 
conscience of mankind and is being exalted as a Prince and 
a Savior. Does the case of Socrates bear any distant analogy 
to that, in its causes as well as in its phenomena? 

The ". teacher of Israel" came to the teacher of mankind 
and said: ''Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come 
from God." Jesus answered: '' Except a man be born again, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God." 

Is not that the key to the teaching of Socrates, as well as 
to that of Jesus Christ? 

The teacher is the messenger of God. The aim of his 
teaching is the reformation of character; the prize of that 
reformation is the kingdom of God. 

It will be no presumptuous thought to suppose that he, 
Socrates, may have been one of those who received ''the 
Word," which was in the world before it was made flesh, and 
of those to whom ' ' he gave the privilege to become children 
of God," as "believing in his name," as receiving into soul 
and mind the name of God, our Father and our Friend, as it is 
written on all the world and in all the soul, and, so receiv- 



104 LECTURES, 

ing, believing '' with all the heart." For ''in every nation 
he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted 
with him." 

If we would understand Socrates, as teacher or as man, 
we must not so much listen to the wit with which he demol- 
ished the conceits of men and gained the sentence of an 
unbeliever and the cup of poison, as study the faith by 
which he was the most believing man of his time, and by 
which he laid hold on eternal life. He believed in God. He 
believed in man. He believed in truth, and, so believing, he 
must speak the truth, for the saving of man and the service 
of God. Teaching, with him, was not a trade. He would 
not take money for it. It was not even a profession. He 
made no promises. It was a mission. Standing before the 
judges and considering whether, to save his life, he would 
consent to cease his teaching, he tells them, ''Men of Athens, 
I honor and love you, but I shall obey God rather than you, and 
while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the 
practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting every one 
whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying, 
'O my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and 
mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up 
the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so 
little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement 
of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all ? Are you 
not ashamed of this?' ^ * * And this I should say to 
everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but 
especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. 
For this is the command of God, as I would have you know. 
And I believe that to this day no greater good has ever hap- 
pened to the state than my service to the God. For I do 
nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young 
alike, not to take thought for your persons or your proper- 
ties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improve- 
ment of the soul. * * * This is my teaching." 



SOCRATES AS A TEACHER. 105 

This, then, was to him a mission, a commission given of 
God, to teach virtue, true manhood, ''to care for the soul, 
that it may be the best. " In fulfilling his mission he came 
first to the general public of Athens; secondly, and more 
especially, to those individuals who put themselves under his 
influence and became his pupils. This last was his proper 
work, and it is that with which we have most to do as teach- 
ers. It is also, like the work of Christ with his disciples, 
that which has taken hold upon the life and history of man- 
kind. But his public life and death was, like that of Christ, 
the more conspicuous in history, and seems to have been 
intended in the original plan of history as a life and a martyr- 
dom auxiliary to that of him who was ' ' to be lifted up that he 
might draw all men unto him." So it is a permanent and a 
fruitful lesson to the world, and we cannot do justice to 
Socrates as a teacher without some study of 

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF SOCRATES. 

We say the public life of Socrates, because his life was 
his teaching. While it could be said of him, more than 
perhaps of any other mere man, that ''never man spake 
like this man," his life was more convincing than his 
words. To an age more used to words than to deeds, the 
praises of continence, of fortitude, of loyalty to country and 
to God were an admiration; but it was an education, to see 
him indifferent to the most alluring temptations, or walking 
bj:.refoot on Thracian ice, or meeting the rage of the people 
when, as moderator, he refused to put an illegal vote, with 
the same composure with which he marched in the midst of 
their panic at Delium; or, finally, to see that calm and reso- 
lute allegiance to the law of right in which he, without 
wavering and without bluster, ^' went to his house " instead 
of obeying the mandate of the thirty tyrants, and lovingly 
told his democratic judges that he must obey God rather 



106 LEGTUBES. 

than them, while at the same time he was so loyal to the 
state that he would not accept an offered deliverance, when 
the court had sentenced him to die. 

The physical, the intellectual, the spiritual composure of 
the man was something marvelous, especially in the midst of 
a people that had learned everything else. Based as it waa 
on a deep loyalty to God, to man and to truth, it made him a 
kind of permanent moderator in the midst of the Athenian 
people in all the fever of their life, as well as in that day of 
frenzy when they were clamoring for the death of their gen- 
erals. It did not avail to save the lives of those generals, 
nor in the first end to save his own life, but we will believe 
that in the final end it did save his life eternal as well as his 
honor in all history. 

His method as teacher of the people was, like that of the 
Great Teacher, not by public sermon, lecture, or harangue, 
nor by literature, but by simple conversation. He was to be 
found in market or gymnasium, or at any hour of the day in 
what was for that hour the most frequented resort. He was^ 
continually conversing and it was free for whosoever would, 
to hear. The conversation, starting with the most common 
things, and using the homeliest illustrations, would go to the 
depths of the soul, to the breadth of life, to the height of 
heaven. 

If we come upon him as he is teaching we shall be struck 
first with his personal appearance. And we must pause to- 
notice it, for it may have been a factor of his power. Hector 
in the Iliad taunts his weaker brother on his beauty of per- 
son. Paris meekly replies: *' We must not refuse the glorious 
gifts of the gods." But those gifts may come in diverse 
forms. The magnificent presence of George Washington,, 
may have helped in bringing his young nation to a position 
of honor among the powers of the world. And yet the very 
homeliness of Abraham Lincoln may have fitted him for 



SOCRATES AS A TEACHER, 107 

a leader in making his country a true home for its humblest 
child, or the poorest stranger. 

Beauty was the passion of Athens, and the young aristo- 
crats of Athens were by nature and by culture the finest 
figures and aspects of mankind. Socrates was the living image 
of Silenus, the comic ideal of grotesque ugliness. And yet 
those young aristocrats were the men who gathered round him 
and fell in love with him. Let Xenophon bring us into a^ 
feast given by Callias, the richest man in Athens, in honor of 
an athletic victory of a beautiful favorite of his, that we may 
get not only the presence of our teacher, but his manifold 
good-nature. Here among the gorgeous guests is Socrates, 
with his old cloak and all his homeliness upon him, and they 
are telling upon what each prided himself most. Critobulus 
rests his claim on his beauty of person. '^How now," said 
Socrates '' do you pretend that you are handsomer than I!" 
^' Yes, indeed, or I should be uglier than all the Silenuses in. 
farces, * * but tell us why you claim to be more 
beautiful than I." *' Well, why do we call anything beauti- 
ful — horse, ox, shield, sword, spear?" '^ Everything is beauti- 
ful according to its fitness for its use." '' Then do you know 
what we want eyes for?" ''To see, of course." '' Then my 
[bulging] eyes are finer than yours [deep-set eyes]." ''How 
so?" "Because yours can only see straight forward, but mine 
can see sidewise because they are bulging." "Do you say 
then that the crab has the finest eyes of all creatures?" 
" Certainly, because they are the best eyes for practical use." 
"Well, but which is the finest nose?" "I think, mine — that 
is, if the gods gave us noses to smell with? For your 
nostrils look to the ground, but mine open up, so as to catch 
odors from every quarter." " But how is your flat nose 
finer than a straight one?" "Because it is not in the way, but 
lets my eyes see at once what they Avant. But a high nose 
intrudes a wall between the eyes." "As to the mouth," 



108 LECTURES, 

said Critobulus, '' I give it up, for if it is made for biting off, 
you could bite off much more than I." ^'But do not you 
not think my kiss is softer because my lips are thick? I 
seem according to your reckoning to have an uglier mouth 
than a donkey. But don't you think it proves that I am 
handsomer than you if the naiads, who are goddesses, bear 
Silens more like me than like you?" So he closes his case, 
and while the jurors cast their secret ballots he holds the 
lamp to the face of his handsome antagonist. All the votes 
are against Socrates, which he charges to the corruption of 
the jury. 

So he came, as a son of man, eating and drinking, but 
never forgetting his mission, and he closes the conversation 
on love at this banquet of wine, with this address to his host 
Callias, who was, as we have said, the wealthiest man of 
Athens, and who was fond of Autolycus, who had just been 
proclaimed victor in the Pancratium at the great Pan- Athenaic 
festival. He says, in substance, ^'The love of the person is 
transient. The love of the soul is immortal. He that loves 
the noble should himself learn nobility. You are fortunate 
in loving one who has an enthusiasm for the honor of father 
and friends — of his countrymen and of mankind. How will 
you prove worthy to love him? How but by making your 
country love you and commit herself to you? Be well 
assured that you can do it. You are of the highest birth, priest 
of the Erechtheid gods, who campaigned with lacchus against 
the barbarians, and now in this festival you have appeared more 
high priestly than all that have been before you, and most 
admirable of all the city for the nobility and the vigor of 
your person. If this seems too serious talk for a drinking 
company do not think it strange ; for I, and our city alike, are 
always in love with a noble nature which is emulous for true 
manhood." 

Then Autolycus looked at Callias, but Callias looked past 



SOCRATES AS A TEACEEB, 109 

him and said to Socrates, '' So you are trying to make a 
match between me and the city, so that I should go into 
politics, and make myself well pleasing to her!" ''Yes, 
indeed, if they shall see you, not in seeming but in sincerity, 
seeking true manhood. For false show is soon exposed in 
the trial, but true nobleness, if a god harm not, renders the 
honor even higher in the ' practical issue.' " 

Plato also has written a ''Banquet," at which he repre- 
sents Alcibiades, the most brilliant of all Athenians, whose 
fascination was fatal to his friends, his country and himself, 
as praising Socrates thus: "I say that he is just like the 
Silenus images in the sculptor's shops, with pipes and 
flutes; but open them and there are images of the gods. * * 
Tou do not know Socrates. You see him very affectionate 
and smitten with the beautiful, and then he ignores all, 
knows nothing, as if all this bearing of his was just a 
Silenus mask. For this is a mere outer covering like the 
carved Silenus. But opened within, my boon companions, 
how full he is of sober mind. He cares nought for beauty 
or wealth or anything else which men count happy. He 
counts all our goods and ourselves for nothing, and is always 
making irony and sport of all human life. But when he is in 
earnest and his heart is opened, I know not if any man has 
seen the images that are within. I saw them once, and they 
seemed to me so divine and golden and all beautiful and 
marvelous that one must do at once whatsoever Socrates 
bids. "***<« When I hear him, my heart leaps up 
more than any Corybant, and my tears pour at his words. 
And I see many others affected just so. I have heard Pericles 
and other good orators, and I thought they spoke well, but 
they did not affect me so. My soul was not troubled nor indig- 
nant at my slavish condition. But this Marsyas has often made 
me feel that I could not live as I am. So as under the spell of 
the Sirens I close my ears and flee lest I should grow old sitting 



110 LECTURES. 

there by him. But when I am gone my ambition overpowers 
me, and I flee from him. When I see him I am ashamed. No 
other man can make me ashamed. Often I wish I might see 
him no more among men, but, if that could be, I well know 
that I should be much more grieved. So I know 
not what to do with the man." Alas for Alcibiades ! that 
he did he knew not what to do ! Overpowered by ambition and 
passion he drank every cup of pleasure, climbed every giddy 
height, made shipwreck upon every shining promontory, and 
'' died as the fool dieth." 

Alcibiades was right in saying that his companions did not 
know Socrates. He spake to the people in parables. Athens 
was full of intellectual Scribes and Pharisees, and he spent this 
public life in unmasking them, acting as he said under the 
bidding of the Delphic god, who had pronounced Socrates 
the wisest of men. Socrates says, that, knowing that he had 
no wisdom, he interj)reted the god to mean that no man was 
wise, and so that he, as the only man who knew that he was 
not wise, was therein the wisest of men. And so he went on 
his mission of vindicating the god by proving that all men 
were fools. Now it is undoubtedly true that, as a rule, he 
that saith to his brother " thou fool " shall be in danger not 
only of 'Hhe council" and ''the judgment," but of ''hell 
fire." It is a perilous, well nigh a fatal, attitude of mind and 
soul. The sincere kindness, and truth of his own soul could 
save Socrates from the great condemnation, and could vindi- 
cate him in the judgment of posterity, but it could not but be 
that he should be brought before the council, and it was not 
strange that the council condemned him. Such a man must 
make many and bitter enemies of those whom he convicted 
of folly or of sin. He could not but be liable to misrepre- 
sentation and to popular prejudice. The world is too dull 
and blind to understand those who are in advance of it. 
It is too sincere to tolerate those who it thinks are leading it 



SOCRATES AS A TEACHER. Ill 

astray; therefore whosoever proposes reform, of law or life, 
does it with the halter about his neck. Socrates knew that 
and consented. He understood that he who introduces reform 
must come into collision with the old, with the prospect that 
the first collision will be fatal to himself. In that conviction 
he, like Christ, avoided public and official life, because, as he 
says in his defense, ^' If I had assayed to engage in politics I 
should have perished long ago and done no good to you or 
to myself. For no man can save his life who honestly 
opposes himself to you or any other people and hinders the 
doing of many unjust and lawless things in the state, but he 
who really fights for the right, if he is to live for even a little 
time, must do it in private and not in public life." So he, 
like Christ, applied himself in private to his real work. 
Meanwhile he continued his public ministry, which he likens 
to the mission of a gadfly, sent to rouse a high bred and 
great horse, which from his very greatness was rather slug- 
gish and needed to be roused. So he says, ^'God seems to 
have set me upon you and I never cease waking and urging 
and reproaching every one of you, besetting you everywhere 
and all day long! You will not easily find another one like 
me. You might easily strike and kill me, and then you 
might sleep all your life, unless God in his mercy should 
send you such another." They struck and he died, a death 
which crowned his life with honor and his race with blessing. 

This public work of Socrates was a discipline, but it could 
hardly be called his teaching, except it be in such a sense as 
Gideon ^Hook thorns of the wilderness and briars and with 
them he taught the men of Succoth." (Judges viii. 16.) 

I wish it were practicable to give one of the discussions 
by which he at once confuted his antagonists, disciplining 
them like those men of Succoth, and educated the eager 
young men who listened; for example, the encounter, which 
Plato gives us, with Gorgias, the magnificent rhetorician, to 



112 LECTURES. 

whom Socrates comes asking to know what his art is. Polus, 
one of the friends of Gorgias, midertakes the answer with 
many words and no point, and is squeezed like a puff-ball 
and thrown aside as an object lesson. Gorgias then defines 
rhetoric as the art of persuasion ; vaunts that by it he can 
make his craft of words worth more than the understanding 
of his subject. Socrates then leads him to say that the orator's 
persuasion is with regard to right and wrong. Socrates asks: 
Must he know the right, and if he does not know it, will Gorgias 
teach him? The rhetorician, for very shame, says yes, and 
is helplessly inconsistent with himself. Then up springs the 
irrepressible Polus and would have Socrates define rhetoric. 
He makes it an imposture — like confectionery, a craft of dis- 
guising the simple truth and evading justice, and so of no 
use, because the first interest of the man who has done wrong 
is to get his deserts and to do justice for the wrong. Where- 
upon Callicles, a representative of the generation which was 
growing up without conscience and without shame, joins issue 
with him, and we have, in naked grapple of logic, like Olym- 
pic athletes, the two principles which are warring in the 
world — the bold selfishness of the devil and the clear loyalty 
of the Son of Man. They come at last to the question, shall 
the statesman speak smooth things and be popular, or shall 
he speak the truth if he die for it? The man of the world 
has felt that he had a soul; as the talk has gone on we have 
seen the pungent words go home; and he shrinks from the 
answ^er. Socrates does not draw back, and he goes on to 
justify his answer by summoning the powers of the world to 
come, those dread judges before whom the naked soul must 
stand, and must receive and meet the due reward of its deeds. 
Then f ollow^s an application searching as from the lips of 
Whitefield, concluding, *'I therefore follow the truth as it 
has appeared to us in our study, that the best way is to 
follow justice and all virtue in life and in death, and not to 



SOGBATES AS A TEACHER. 113 

follow the way to which you would persuade me. For it is 
worth nothing, oh Callicles." It was the same persuasion 
which he sealed with his blood. 

From such conversations Gorgias and Polus and Callicles 
might go away defeated and therefore not won, convicted 
and therefore not convinced, and so ready to crucify him, 
but those young men that stood around were bright as well 
as light, and, as they heard, their minds enlarged, their souls 
were waked, they had caught the thrill of life. Shall we say 
that they did not know how it was. Neither did Socrates 
know, but the word that was in the world, coming to his 
own, though his own received him not, was quick as light to 
enter where a soul was opened, and '' as many as received him 
to give them power to become sons of God." 

Since we went out of Eden the earth has brought forth 
thorns and thistles for us, and they have done us good, but 
they are not the word of God by which man is to live. 

The teaching of Socrates or of Christ was not for Scribes 
or Pharisees, for sophists or demagogues, but for sincere 
souls, that were ready to hear the word and do it. 

Xenophon, the pupil of Socrates, says there is no educa- 
tion to any man from one who does not please him; by 
which he means not only that the pupil should be in sympa- 
thy personally with his teacher, but in sympathy also with 
his thoughts; that he should seek the truth for the truth's 
sake; that he should cultivate his mind, not so much that he 
might be a stronger, but a better man. It meant that in the 
case of a pupil of Socrates. 

Socrates in the street, Christ by the wayside, confounded 
those that claimed to be wise, and interested the throngs that 
gathered around them, but they were also doing what was 
nearer to their hearts, as they attracted to themselves, one 
here and another there, those that were prepared to follow 
them in the way of truth and life. 



114 LECTURES. 

These were their pupils, their disciples, and it is especially 
in the training of these, his pupils, that we are to study- 
Socrates as a teacher. He did not call them pupils, but 
friends, and the first trait we should notice was the personal 
affection with which he sought and cultivated his compan- 
ions. *' He often said that he was in love with some one, 
but it was manifestly not a love for beauty of person but for 
souls that had capacity for virtue." He says, ''I, myself, 
Antiphon, as any other man delights in a good horse or 
dog or bird, so and yet more do I delight in good friends, 
and if I have anything good I teach it, and I introduce them 
to others by whom I may think they will be helped toward 
virtue. And the treasures of the wise men of old, which they 
have left written in scrolls, I unroll and go through with my 
friends, and if we see anything good we cull it out, and count 
it great gain if we are becoming friends one to another.' 

As this mutual affection was the attraction, the satisfac- 
tion, so it was the reward of his teaching. ' ' He thought it 
strange if any one should take money for teaching virtue and 
not think he would have the greatest gain in getting a good 
friend, or should be afraid that the one who had become 
noble and good would not have the greatest gratitude to the 
one who had given him the most help." 

We have here, then, a second motive of the life-work of 
Socrates, as it should be of every teacher. It was not only a 
work of duty, it was a work of love; of love to minds and 
souls, as well as love to God and truth. 

Correspondent to these motives are the rewards, the prize 
set before him, which governed the life and inspired the work 
of this teacher. '* Do you think," says he, " that from all 
gains of land or sea there is such satisfaction as from the 
realizing that one's self is becoming a better man and getting 
better friends? " Such was his idea of wealth. Wealth is 
virtue, and it is stored in one's own soul and in the souls of 
those who have become as one with him. 



SOCEATES AS A TE AGREE. 115 

Both these motives united to fit him for a teacher. He 
cultivated himself, not merely for himself, but that he might 
teach others by his example. For their sakes he sanctified 
himself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. 
Magical as were his words, his pupils felt even more the 
impression of his example. ''Strange," says Xenophon, 
" that any should think that Socrates corrupted the young. 
No man had such continence, such fortitude to bear and to 
do, and, furthermore, he was so trained to moderate desires 
that having very little he very easily had enough." 

A character of such weight, such appetencies and such 
attractiveness, thrown into such a nebula of quick and bright 
spiritual elements as Athenian society was in the age of 
Pericles, naturally drew to itself congenial elements, and a 
new star appeared in the firmament, which has remained a 
fixed star in civilization. It is sometimes called the school of 
Socrates. The name is not a bad one, if we remember what 
the word school signified in his day. It is a Greek word, and 
it means leisure. Socrates says in his Defence, ' ' The young 
men of the wealthiest families, who have the most leisure, 
Schole^ Qi^]oj hearing men examined, and follow me of their 
own accord" (Ap. 23 c). From these throngs of men of 
leisure who followed him, Socrates, as a '' Fisher of men," 
could gather those whom he thought fit for education, to 
spend their leisure with him in mutual helpfulness, that they 
might be no more what Horace calls '' nebulones," floating 
atoms in a nebula of vanity, but a constellation, a system, a 
fellowship of minds seeking truth, of hearts seeking wisdom, 
like Christ and His disciples, except that Socrates did not 
assume so to speak ''as one having authority." He would 
not have them call him Master and Lord, for he was not so. 
And yet to that chastened heart and that cleansed ear there 
came words which other men did not hear^ and which he recog- 
nized as out of the depths, the voice of the spirit, to dai/x6viov. 



116 LEGTURES. 

It was generally a negative voice, saying, < ' This is not the 
way, walk ye not in it." As we remember, he affirmed that 
his highest wisdom was to know that he knew nothing. But 
even that was a great thing to bring out, to begin to utter, 
even in the midst of that vanity of vanities, the Athens 
of Pericles and the Sophists, the voice of the groaning crea- 
tion which endures that vanity, not willingly, but supported 
by a hope implanted by its Creator, that it shall be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of 
the children of God. In such a hope the school of Socrates 
formed itself out of the nebula of vanity and wrought on 
from age to age, and it knew not what to pray for as it 
ought. But He that knew the mind of the Spirit wrought 
with it, until Pie came who *' brought life and immortality to 
light," and certain Greeks came to worship at Jerusalem and 
said, '* We would see Jesus," and Jesus answered, 'Hhe 
hour is come." 

This school of Socrates was exactly a college: '' A society 
of scholars for purposes of study." He was the '' President " 
and his associates were his ''Fellows." We want then to 
study 

Socrates as President of the College. 

{ / His first duty as President was to select and bring in the 
students who should be in the college. The object of the 
college was to train men to be able and good men, and to do 
the state and the world good. Xenophon says (Mem. iv. 1, 2) 
that he tested good natures by their aptness to learn and to 
remember, and by their enthusiasm for those studies which 
would fit them to be good members of the family and state 
and to deal well with men and the affairs of men. He 
studied the natures of each, to give each the encouragement 
or repression, the correction or stimulus, which each might 
require, and to give all such direction as to studies or 



SOGBATES AS A TEACHEB. 117 

pursuits as they needed, teaching them himself or introducing 
them to other teachers as there might be occasion. 

The course of study in the Socrates College might seem to 
us to fall short of our idea of a University, but Xenophon 
says that ^'he was most intent of all men to know what 
each student already knew, and most zealous to teach what 
he himself could teach of what a noble and good man should 
know, and brought them to others to learn what he himself 
was not master of." 

The department which Socrates, like many other college 
presidents, chose for himself was that of morals, or we should 
rather say of virtue, of Arete^ true manhood. For, literally 
understood, morals, ethics, have to do with Mores^ Ethe, man- 
ners, habits, which are the outward show or operations of 
the man. And Socrates, except that he was a sweeter tempered 
man, had more loathing than Carlyle himself for any empty 
raiment. He wanted the heart, out of which are the issues 
of life. We have, then, to consider 

Socrates as a Pkofessor of Morals, or of Virtue, 

OF True Manhood. 

Probably he might have objected to both terms of his 
title. He professed, he promised, no such thing. No teacher 
can make you a man. God helping you, you must do that your- 
self, and all that any man can do is to do all that he can. He 
can give incitement and suggestion and example and contin- ^ 
ual care. All that Socrates did, as scarcely any other man has 
done, but he did not insure the result. He only ''trusted 
that those of his companions, who accepted his advice, would 
be for all their life good friends to himself and to one an- 
other." (Mem. i. 2, 8.) And that brings us back to the crit- 
icism which Socrates might still have made to the title of 
his department. If he would go beyond the manners to the 
man, and say virtue, rather than morals, perhaps he would 



118 LEGTUBES. 

still go beyond the man to the motive. Socrates said 
that the only subject which he understood was love. (Symp. 
177.) So he sought to teach that Love — Love to God 
and to man — which is the fountain in the heart from which 
all life flows. As it is written (Luke x. 28): <'This do 
and thou shalt live." '*It hath been said by them of old 
time: ' Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy,' " 
but Socrates says: ''We must not return evil for evil." 

Probably, however, it will be better to define the subject 
of the teaching of Socrates as Virtue : that attitude of soul 
whose motive is love and whose law is truth, and whose 
reward is the testimony of a good conscience and the returning 
love of God and of man. ''My friends," says Virtue in his 
parable of Prodicus, (Mem. ii,l,33) "delight in the memory of 
the past and rejoice in the experience of the present, enjoying 
through me the friendship of the gods, the love of friends, 
the honor of their father-land." 

For such culture of character, Socrates must limit the 
number as well as select the members of his college. Christ 
chose twelve for his disciples. And perhaps something like 
a similar number might make up at any time the inner circle of 
the companions of Socrates. A university, which deals 
with the outside facts of all departments of knowledge, may 
be numerous as well as manifold. A college, whose office is 
to make men, should not have so many but that heart can 
come near to heart as well as mind to mind. 

Happy was Socrates in looking back upon a life spent in 
such opportunities. Happy, in like manner, if not in like 
measure, may still be a college president who, in like ripen- 
ing age, may look back upon life spent with such classes, who 
have been from year to year helping to educate themselves 
and one another in true manhood or womanhood, and have 
gone forth to live or to die for country or for mankind, and 
have left behind them, in the character of the college itself. 



SOGBATES AS A TEACHER. 119 

fruits of their character which are the inheritance of their 
successors. Whenever there be such a president may his 
mantle fall, with a double portion of spirit, on his successors 
— and that of Socrates and a greater than Socrates upon all. 

In illustration of the method of Socrates, Xenophon gives 
an account of his training of a young man, named Euthyde- 
mus, whom he found full of weak conceit, but thought him 
worth educating. He describes the honest art with which he 
attracts him; then the spiritual surgery by which he casts out 
all his conceit, by examining him on such questions as 

What is right and what is wrong? 

What is it to know oneself? 

What things are good, and what evil ? 

What is a democracy? 

Each confident answer is riddled by the magic power of 
Socrates' questioning, until the young man is compelled to 
confess his emptiness, and to say ^'I am thinking if it were 
not best for me to say nothing — for I am in danger of simply 
knowing nothing." So he goes away disheartened and 
thinking that he is verily a slave; but he does not give it up, 
as many do, but attaches himself to Socrates. And Socrates 
undertakes to teach him. 

His first lesson is: Living loyalty to a living God. 

His second: Loyalty to right and duty. 

His third: Self command as the condition of liberty. 

On such strong foundations he builds his education in 
manhood, enforcing them wonderfully with w^ords, but more 
mightily by example. He taught piety, and was the most 
pious of men. So it was as to self command, temperance, 
honesty and sincerity, modesty, loyalty to God, to truth, to 
country and to everything which makes a true man. His 
method of question and answer waked minds. His searching 
questions probed souls, and his high convictions purified and 
exalted them. 



120 LEGTUBES. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that he gave all 
his life, all his mind, all his soul to making himself and all 
that were with him the best men they could be made. He 
died cheerfully, in the consciousness that he had been con- 
tinually becoming a better man, and saying '^ I am sure that 
witness will always be borne me, that I have never wronged 
any man nor made him worse, but always tried to make my 
companions better men." 

My friends, we may not have capacity or opportunity for 
such a career as that of Socrates. But may we not so live 
that witness shall be borne, that we have tried to make every 
one with whom we had to do a better man? 



YII. 

MARTYRDOM. 



Martyrdom. 



February 1, 1864. 

There are few, very few, words in the speech of man, so 
honored and revered, so loved and cherished as the word 
martyr. And it is justly honored: for there is no earthly act 
of man more striking, more generous, more noble, or more 
insane than the act of martyrdom. That a man should, 
deliberately and freely, sacrifice his own life for the good of 
others, or for what he recognizes as duty or truth, is a deed 
which has little in common with ordinary human action ; and 
yet men, when they see it, praise it and love it and rejoice 
in it and exclaim: *'That is true manhood!" And it is no 
idle praise or selfish love, but an enthusiasm thrilling the 
human nature. 

What is a martyr? And what power is there in him, 
which can so command the hidden keys of our nature and 
make them vocal and even exultant in admiration and sym- 
pathy for him, and in condemnation of ourselves ? 

A martyr is, in the original meaning of the word and in 
the true essence of the character, a witness. Every true 
martyr, in whatsoever cause, is such by virtue of some faith 
which was in him, of something which he was persuaded was 
the truth, which it was his duty to speak or to do, though it 
cost him his life. If there were no more than this, if mar- 
tyrs were only a severe order of spirits, choosing to die rather 
than to swerve, they would command our admiration; but 
that love and sympathy and attraction, which attend their 
name and wait upon their acts, testify that sternness is noth- 

123 



124 LECTURES. 

ing more than an accessory and subordinate element of the 
character which we welcome and embrace. To understand 
that, we must consider what the witness is which the mar- 
tyrs bear. We shall find in it an announcement of the great- 
ness and the hopes of humanity. 

Let us study the meaning and the importance of martyr- 
dom in a familiar instance, which I take because its familiar- 
ity has made it a known and influential witnessing to men: 
Thermopylae. 

The host of the Persian king, five million souls, 
the historian tells us, have been kept at bay for six days by a 
little Greek army under Leonidas, King of Sparta, in the Pass 
of Thermopylae. On the left of those Greeks were the preci- 
pices of Mount (Eta, and on their right, the sea; behind them 
their homes, and before them the foe; and in that Pass, not 
wider in some places than a wagon road, they stood, with the 
mountain and the sea for their allies, an impassable barrier to 
protect those homes. Now the sixth night is wearing away. 
The soldiers, weary with fighting all the long midsummer day, 
are asleep. Megistias, son of the old prophetic race of Melam- 
pus, is offering the morning sacrifice. He announces that 
the omens portend death. In a little time come Greeks who 
have escaped from the Persian army with the news that a 
traitor has told the enemy of a secret path by which a force 
has been sent over the mountain. Then come their sentinels 
down from the mountain to say that the passage has been 
made and the choicest corps of the Persians are coming upon 
them. The Pass is lost, but there is still time for escape. 
But King Leonidas will not go, for there was an oracle 
that either Sparta or a Spartan king must fall, and Leonidas 
will be the offering. Nor will the seer, Megistias, go. He 
sends his only son away and abides to die with the king. Nor 
will the three hundred Spartans go, for the Spartan law for- 
bids them to flee from an enemy. As the morning came, they 



MABTYRDOM, 125 

prepared their persons and their armor with studious care, 
as for a festival, and, when the Persians came, they fought 
and died in an ecstasy of triumph rather than of despair. 
One of them was away, sick and blind. He told his slave to 
lead him to the field. The slave brought him near and fled. 
The Spartan rushed where he heard the battle din and fell 
with his comrades. 

These men are recognized as martyrs. And what is their 
testimony? Their epitaph was, '' Stranger, go tell the Spartan 
men that here we lie obedient to their laws.'^ 

Ah! There we have something more than a brave frenzy. 
There was a meaning in their death, and a meaning which 
could only be expressed in its true emphasis by their death. 
Those men had a faith which made them strong to die. 
They recognized themselves, not so much as individuals, with 
each a single self to save first of all, but as members of a 
state, and, as such, bound to save the state more than to save 
themselves. 

Such witness comes with authority. The doctrine which 
has had such power over them must be one which they have 
read on deep tablets of the soul, whose inscriptions are buried 
under the corruptions of human nature, but which soul-trying 
crises lay bare. The doctrine which can so exalt human 
nature and make it victorious over death itself must be a 
doctrine worthy of the study of men. See how that faith of 
theirs was not only a power over them, but a power in them. 
On that morning they came forth in front of the Pass and 
fought in the plain, and all the Persian army could not drive 
them back. And on the field appeared a further illustration 
of the conditions of greatness in man. As they stood, sup- 
ported in their stern purpose by the thought of Sparta and 
her laws, the crowd of their adversaries were driven upon 
their spears by the lash of slave-drivers. There was the dif- 
ference between the man who has law in him, and the man 



126 LECTURES. 

who has a master over him. Those poor servile Asiatics, 
that died at Thermopylae are also witnesses that a man with 
a lash over him is not half a man, and so poor unwilling wit- 
nesses telling us that man was not made to be a slave. We 
do not call them martyrs ; we reserve that sacred name for 
those men, whose manhood, exalted by their faith, proved 
by their triumph over death that man was made to be a 
citizen, that a man with law in him is ten times a man. 

Xerxes felt the power of their martyrdom, and felt that 
there was a force in Greece, such as he had not considered 
when he gathered his grand army. Ever since that day, the 
names Leonidas and Thermopylae have been reminding and 
teaching men what greatness there may be in man, and that the 
condition of that greatness is law, and its life is loyalty. 

Similar to this is the testimony of all patriotic martyrdom. 
There was a day upon which hung the destiny of Rome. Her 
army was in battle with the Latins on Mount Vesuvius. 
Publius Decius, consul of the Romans, saw that his men were 
giving way. He called to him a pontiff and repeated after 
him a form of words, by which he devoted himself, together 
with the army of the enemy, to death and the gods below. 
Then he girded his toga according to the old Gabine 
cincture, and mounted his horse and dashed among the foe. 
He fell and Rome prevailed, and her empire grew; grew by 
that same spirit of devotion to law and the state, till it held 
the world in its law. So great an issue may hang upon a 
single martyr, and hang not unworthily. We coimt men, but 
men are not counted in history. Men are of force according 
to the amount of truth and of law — for law is only 
truth organized and efficient — that is in them. And their 
most potent expression of that truth and law is by dying for 
it, and, therefore, they alone who die for the truth are com- 
monly called by mankind martyrs, as being fully accepted as 
witnesses in the great issue which humanity is trying. For 



MARTYRDOM, 127 

there is a reason why the instinct of mankind loves to 
regard these men as witnesses. There is a trial going on 
from age to age in the general mind of mankind, and from 
hour to hour in the soul of each individual man. In that 
trial, man — each man for himself and the race of man for man- 
kind — is at once judge and jury, and the destiny of man is sus- 
pended upon the verdict to be rendered. The questions at 
issue in those assizes are these: What is man? And what 
are the laws and what the issue of his being ? 

In our courts, an oath is required as a condition of the 
reception of testimony. Humanity, too, requires a corre- 
sponding pledge of the reliability of its witnesses, and it re- 
ceives no one as a witness of the first degree — as a martyr — 
who does not confirm his testimony by the offering of his life, 
and it rules out all testimony which is not proven by some 
measure of self-sacrifice. It passes by the evidence of the mill- 
ions of Asiatics at Thermopylae, while it records for ever on its 
heart the witness of the three hundred Spartans. While it 
calls those who have the martyr spirit its witnesses, it has a 
corresponding term for those who have no martyr spirit. 
They are insignificant, that is, there is no meaning in them. 
slaves, whose motive was the tingling of a scourge, or the 
clink of money, or any selfish end, are, rightfully or wrong- 
fully, set aside by humanity in its inquiry into the mystery 
of man, of life, of death, and of duty. 

In that very fact, see how great a principle respecting man 
is decided. The human soul, however it may yield itself to 
selfishness, refuses to hear the witness who has nothing bet- 
ter than selfishness to present. Man is thoroughly conscious 
that, whatever may be the true reading of the mystery of his 
being, he was not made to be a selfish being. He welcomes 
the martyrs because they present to him a nobler law of life 
and action. He feels that his nature is degraded, that, under 
manifold low and base subjections, and especially under the 



128 LECTURES. 

fear of death, he is all his lifetime subject to bondage; and 
he is looking for some one who can tell him of some better 
state. 

Before this tribunal pass Leonidas and his companions; 
and of what is man assured by them? 

They testify that there is an exaltation above selfishness, 
possible and native to man; that the heroic life is not a fic- 
tion of an imaginary past and of an impossible future; but 
that the rudiments of such a nature are still in man. Long 
before Leonidas, Hesiod had sung among the Greeks that the 
race of heroes was past and gone, and that an age of iron had 
succeeded it. But the Persian wars were to Greece what 
great crises of history are to a people who have life in them. 
Well do we call such events crises, that is, trials, for they try 
and test the souls of men, and in them come forth manifesta- 
tions of the nobleness which lies buried in man's nature. 
Those revelations assure mankind again that life is not mere 
vanity. 

The Persian wars were such a crisis for Greece, and they 
revived in the nation the thoughts and sympathies of the 
heroic age. Man has a persuasion that if a man knows the 
truth the truth will make him free; that the strong man is he 
in whom the word of God abideth; and he is convinced that 
that faith which develops itself most in strength and great- 
ness and loyalty is nearest to the truth of God. Accordingly, 
the moral victory of Leonidas and his men wins the verdict 
for their faith. 

Those times present us an illustration, on a still 
broader scale, of martyrdom and the greatness which it 
confers. To states as well as to individuals, the same choice 
is presented, between noble and ignoble action. There were 
four leading states of Greece in the generation before those 
wars — Sparta, Argos, Thebes and Athens. Of these, Argos 
refused to take any part in the common defence, and was 



MABTYBDOM. 129 

never great again; Thebes submitted and aided the Persians 
as soon as they had carried the Pass, and for three generations 
there was nothing great in Thebes; Sparta still led the cause 
of Greece, and her greatness continued and increased. 
Athens was called herself to become a martyr. When the 
Persians swept over the country, the Athenians left their lands 
to the destroyer and their city to the flames, transferring 
their state to the Island of Salamis and to their ships. That 
martyrdom had made their state unquenchable. Xerxes saw 
their little fleet scatter his thousand ships at Salamis, and he 
fled to the Hellespont. The Athenian people returned to the 
spot where their city had been, and from that day the time of 
Athenian greatness was fully come. And it is remarkable to 
see how that greatness was pervaded by the free and the heroic 
spirit. The period of her glory is marked by the impulse of 
her martyr spirit. That was the time of her great poets, 
and artists, and statesmen, and philosophers. Socrates, the 
most living honor of her philosophy, was himself a martyr, 
and Demosthenes, one hundred and fifty years after the Per- 
sian war, when the state was fallen, is assured still of the 
truth of the martyr principle by the remembrance of the 
deeds which were done in that year of martyrdom. He ex- 
claims : 

''It cannot be, it cannot be, ye men of Athens, that ye 
were wrong in taking upon you that peril for the freedom and 
safety of all Greece! No! Not by your fathers that were in 
the front of danger at Marathon ; that stood side by side with 
their brethren at Platsea; that fought the sea fights at Salamis 
and at Artemisium; and many more that lie in the public sep- 
ulchres, good men, all of whom alike the state has accounted 
worthy of the same honor, — those that have fallen in defeat 
with those that have prevailed in victory. " 

So the greatest and the last orator of free Athens inter- 
preted the record of Athenian martyrdom, and in a few years 



130 LEGTUBE8. 

more his own name was added to the list of martyrs to lib- 
erty. He expresses truly the moral which humanity draws 
from martyrdom — the revelation of a higher sphere and law 
of human life; that loyalty even unto death, to state and 
nation, which is a development of that enlargement of soul 
by which the single self is to be merged in the fellowship of 
mankind. 

But the best souls, even of the old world, found in the wit- 
ness of the martyrs something more than that there may be, 
and should be, and shall be a great unity in the present life of 
man. Their victory over death revealed to them the testi- 
mony of another life. 

We turn from Demosthenes to the orator and martyr of 
Roman liberty, the most accomplished man of antiquity, 
and he shall be our guide in interpreting the testimony of 
martyrs to the immortality of the human soul. Cicero speaks 
in the name of the elder Cato respecting the fear of death : 

'' Concerning which," he says, '^ it seems to me that there 
need be no long discussion, when I remember not only Lucius 
Brutus, who was slain for his country's liberty, or the two 
Decii, who spurred their horses to their freely chosen death, 
or Marcus Attilius, who went to Carthage to meet his fate in 
order to keep his pledge given to the enemy, or the two 
Scipios, who desired to make even their own bodies a barrier 
against the Punic foe, or your grandfather, Lucius Paulus, 
who in that disgrace at Cannae expiated his colleague's rash- 
ness by his own death, or Marcus Marcellus, whose death even 
Hannibal, the most cruel of foes, honored with a burial; 
not only these, but even our legions, marching often with a 
spirit joyful and erect into a position from which they 
expected never to return. I see not why I should hesitate to 
tell you what I think respecting death — a discernment which 
seems to grow more clear within me as I draw nearer unto 
death. I believe that your father, Publics Scipio, and yours. 



MARTYRDOM. 131 

Caius Laelius, men most illustrious and most dear to me, are 
living now, and living the life which alone is worthy of the 
name of life. * * For the mind is a heavenly thing, 
forced down from a home on high, and, as it were, submerged 
here in the earth, a place discordant with its divine nature 
and its immortality." 

So great things already have appeared in that forgotten 
book of the law which the martyrs have found and brought 
forth from among the rubbish of that ruined house of that 
Lord — the fallen nature of man. Behold the inscription 
which tells us that the human mind was not builded for a 
mere stall for sheep and oxen and the changing of money! 
*' Take these things hence. " For man has been taught by 
the martyrs that the mind has a being as large as the range 
of thought, as lasting as the truth. 

Shall not humanity take to its heart the witnesses who 
have assured it of such verities? 

But we are not yet ready to dismiss the witnesses. 
They must tell us not only the possibility, but the condi- 
tions of such sublimity of human life. 

What is the secret principle of the greatness of martyrs? 
We find it in the principle of faith. They have thought 
and have realized that self is not the center, and that sight is 
not the bound of the world in which man lives, but that 
there is a sphere beyond sight and a being greater than self, 
to which it is the honor of sight and of self to be subordinate. 
If they have made their lives illustrious by their surrender of 
life, it was only because they had first made themselves sub- 
lime by the surrender of self; because they had made them- 
selves free by the acceptance of law. 

For an example of these principles and for a further open- 
ing of the testimony of the martyrs, take our common phrase, 
<' martyrs of liberty." We recognize the term as the title of 
an actual and most noble order of manhood. But what can 



182 LECTURES. 

sucli a term mean? What is this liberty for which a man 
should leave the joys and hopes and affections of this life, 
should forsake his labors and his duties, and be no more a 
man upon the earth? Is it any liberty of his own? If it be 
so, then surely it must be because man has a vision that death 
is not a going out into darkness and annihilation, but that for 
true souls there is a better country, where they may escape 
from the bondage of corruption which rests upon us here. 

But if such an anticipation of individual emancipation for 
the soul by death is present in martyrdom, and in our applause 
of martyrdom, yet it is not the prominent element of the 
martyr spirit. It is not in itself the martyr's motive. The 
martyr of liberty is such mainly because he dies for the lib- 
erty of other men. 

And is it so, that a man is so bound to his fellow men that 
it is proper, and even just and honorable, for him to surren- 
der his own innocent blood for their good? The martyrs of 
liberty affirm that it is; all that praise them affirm that it is; 
but, if it is, what shall we mean by the liberty or the rights of 
the individual? 

Here is a great fact which all martyrdom for the good of 
man reveals, and which, when revealed by them, finds its 
response in all of our minds — the principle that individual 
men are not separate sovereignties, but that we are all mem- 
bers one of another. 

Those Spartans at Thermopylae died for their country 
and its laws. What were they dying for? What is this 
thing which we call our country and say that it is noble to 
die for it? According to the martyr theory of life, this world 
is one world, made by the one God, and, therefore, its parts 
are not disconnected and uuharmonious, sprung of chaos and 
hasting back to chaos; but they continually unite in greater 
wholes and higher harmonies, in the larger and the sublimer 
circles of being, until we come to Him who is the All in AIL 



MABTYRDOM. 133 

And mankind has always recognized the civil state as such a 
greater whole, of which the individual man is a member; and 
the extent of the recognition of that membership and willing 
accord to the life and the law of the state has been approved 
as a measure of the true manhood which was in an individual 
man. The freest and truest souls have believed that man 
was made to be a member of the state, and to be fully de- 
voted and subject, not only in outward acts, but, within the 
province of the state, in thought and emotion, to the state — 
willing to yield life to it. Socrates, called '' wisest of men," 
steadfastly refused to escape from death when it had been 
pronounced against him even unjustly by his country. The 
demand of man for liberty is not a casting off of the author- 
ity of the state, rather it asserts and extends and makes the 
more sacred that authority ; only it demands that authority be 
so constituted and exercised as not to hinder but to foster the 
best development of the being of man as a child of God. 

I have felt constrained to dwell upon this point, because 
there is a degree of present tendency to forget the true nature 
and worth of the state. We have a saying that ''in old 
times the individual existed for the state, but that in modern 
times the state exists for the individual." If this were 
true, what could it mean except this: that in old times there 
was a vitality in human society, whereby men wrought to- 
gether as members of the state and produced the greatness of 
the republics of old; but that now there is a wide corruption 
at work reducing human society to the savage state, which is 
the natural working of the individual or atomistic principle. 
But the saying does still point, a little blindly, to the truth, 
which seems to be this: that Christianity has brought in a 
new understanding of the worth of the individual soul, a 
new appreciation of man as man. It is needful now that all 
the structure of human society be reconstructed of living 
stones, upon deeper foundations, with a broader scope and 



134 LECTURES. 

sublimer elevation. The new ideas have heaved and are 
heaving the old structures to their foundations, and they are 
lying or falling in ruins about us. But as we see them fall, 
shall we exult in the ruin, and say that that dissolution is the 
glory of modern times? Is it anything for us to boast of 
that we have leveled the marble temples of Athens to the 
dust, and that we will go on to burn them to lime, and 
crumble them to powder, and that such converting of the 
crystalline marble to the dust of the streets is the inau- 
guration of liberty? Not so! From all these ruins there 
shall rise a new temple. The recognition of the brotherhood 
of all men, while it is necessarily breaking in pieces forms of 
society builded upon a narrower principle, is also working 
toward the growing together of mankind into a new state, 
embracing all mankind, and whose law shall fill and pervade 
every man's nature. As respects mankind alone, that state 
will be a republic, a commonwealth, its law being the law 
which shines in all martyrdom for liberty or for humanity, 
— '<Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

Thus we have endeavored to present the testimony of 
martyrs, taking for our illustration that which seems at first 
view most distant from the faith and hope and love, which are 
the general result of the testimony of martyrdom, — namely, 
political and martial martyrdom. According to this view, 
all martyrs for liberty, for loyalty, for humanity, for truth, 
and for religion, whether false or true, unite in one body of 
testimony; they constitute one ''cloud of witnesses" sur- 
rounding us, assuring and re-assuring humanity that man's 
nature is not deceived in that hope which alone sustains it 
under this " bondage of corruption," this helpless dissolution 
in which we seem to lie. Though all without and all within 
seems like disorganization and vanity — all our race ''like 
water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up " — so 
many isolated and therefore insignificant atoms appearing on 



MARTYRDOM, 135 

the earth and sinking into it again, and each individual man 
a mere chaos of wandering and warring thoughts, without 
system or meaning or aim, — yet that there is in man's being a 
truth and a life, a nobility, a greatness and a strength — that 
a man has to do not merely with these transient and tempo- 
rary things which are seen, but with things unseen and eter- 
nal, and that his being has fellowship with all mankind, with 
all intelligence and with God. 

With good reason, therefore, do we hail those martyrs of 
truth, who have assured man that all is not vanity, but that 
truth will make man free and great; we hail those martyrs of 
patriotism, of liberty and of loyalty, who have shown how men 
may be united and exalted together by a common law, whose 
working is the liberty and strength and greatness of united 
manhood; we hail those martyrs of humanity, who have taught 
us that the law of human fellowship which even war declared, 
is, in its true reading, a law of kindness, — ''thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. " We hail those martyrs of religion, 
who have given so earnest a voice to our common persuasion, 
that man and mankind, thus great in their individual and 
their united being, live and move and have that being in a 
yet greater being — in God, and that the law of God is the 
law of man's life. 

To such conclusions had the testimony of martyi'S brought 
the best minds and souls of the old world before the Martyr of 
martyrs came. The consciousness that we are members one of 
another had organized ruling races into military communities, 
as in Persia, in Sparta and in Rome, which, in the strength 
of their own internal fellowship, while they vindicated their 
own liberty, held mastership over slaves and dominion over 
nations, until the world was held under the law of Rome and 
of Parthia, through the strength of that devotion to the state 
which was illustrated at Thermopylae. That power of law, 
grasped by the hand of the Caesars held the world in order 



186 LECTURES, 

though it had no better banner than: ''Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor and hate thy enemy." 

Then the cross was set up as the martyr banner of salva- 
tion for all mankind. From that day to this, there have been 
two powers in the world; they are: first, the military law of 
exclusive patriotism of country, race or caste, maintaining 
liberty for itself, and dominion over subject tribes or slaves, 
whose strength is in the resolute will and the ready sword, 
and also in that instinct of loyalty through which men grow 
together. That regime has done a great and needful work in 
l^reparing the world for the larger and truer union of all 
humanity under a royal law of liberty, a union which can 
only come by the surrender of prerogatives, the sacrifice of 
self for the greater self, not now of family or state but of all 
mankind, taking for its banner the cross, not as a pic- 
turesque emblem but as actually borne by the Son of Man 
and by those that receive Him. 

The religious victory of the martyr over the sword is the 
grand pivotal triumph of history; but we have more to do 
with the political struggle between the rights of man and the 
prerogative of power, with the great conflict and the grand 
reconciliation of Law and Liberty. 

Man's consciousness of his own rights made the republics 
and the dominions of Sparta, Rome and Venice, and when they 
were merged in empires, man's inborn conscience of the 
rights of other men, of all men, began to gather the nebula 
of a commonwealth which was to supersede all empire. It 
has wrought and is working great silent, as well as great 
convulsive revolutions, and it is to work greater revolutions 
yet, in Europe and in Asia. 

Both regimes, that of liberty and of mastership, had been 
transplanted to the new continent, and, in the form of asser- 
tion of our own rights, had united in the struggle by which 
our nation declared its own Independence, basing it on the 



MABTYBDOM. 137 

common rights of all men. But in half of the nation slavery- 
existed in bold defiance of those rights, and when the con- 
science of our people could not forbear the protest, the despot 
spirit rose in a rage, which could not be pacified even by the 
utmost forbearance, by which a strong love of the Union had 
held in check the love of man. That rage demanded the dis- 
solution of our nation. Then came a crisis greater and more 
sublime than that Greek and Persian war. The cause of the 
nation and of man were one. 

Was there ever such a spectacle as this nation presented 
four years ago? In a great nation two antagonist prin- 
ciples had grown to mighty power and had not yet come 
to the deadly grapple. There was the spirit of liberty, per- 
vading and possessing the great body of the nation and mak- 
ing it, in its own good conscience, so peaceful and loyal and 
loving, that it could think no evil; and there was the spirit 
of despotism, to which the honest truth of the nation was an 
offence, and its patient forbearance was a provocation. And 
so, that spirit brought its action against our mother and de- 
manded her death. 

What a sudden crisis was that! We all had slept about 
our mother's throne during all the menaces that had preceded; 
for neither she nor we could dream that her sons would seek 
her life. The assault came, and either she or her true sons 
must die. And she rose and called for her martyrs, and a 
scofling foe and an unbelieving or envious world looked to 
see if they would come. 

It was worth a lifetime to see that day, when the word 
went forth that America had need of martyrs, and the mill- 
ions that, till that day, had known their mother only by the 
ceaseless blessings which her loving care bestowed, answer- 
ed the call, exulting in the opportunity to speak and do and 
die for her. It was a scene in history which grows upon us 
as we come to be more removed from it, and we feel that as 



138 LEGTUBES. 

yet we are able to take into our field of view only a portion 
of its vastness. Did you ever observe how the events in his- 
tory, which we used to wonder at, have grown little since 
that day? 

But even the enthusiasm of that day has been surpassed 
by the patient steadfastness with which the sons of America 
have persisted in their testimony. As the call has been 
for more martyrs, they have come, tide upon tide, 'Hhree 
hundred thousand more" again and again, and still they 
come, volunteers to take the chances of life and of death 
for their country. They are from all our community. 
Our neighborhoods, our congregations, our college classes, our 
families are thinned, because neighbors, friends, sons, 
brothers, lovers are gone to their places among the living 
witnesses, or the martyrs, of our common mother. 

Seeing then that we are surrounded by such a cloud of wit- 
nesses, let us try to read their testimony. For it means 
something. Not in a mere idle or blind excitement have those 
young men gone from friends and scenes they loved to the 
discomforts and perils of camp and of field. Before me, as I 
write, lies a letter received a year ago from one of them, a 
noble Christian scholar and man, who turned aside from 
studies and from hopes cherished and loved. He says: ''We 
believe we shall not long be soldiers; we are encouraged 
as we think how much brighter the prospect of preserving 
our country's life and honor is, than it was a few months ago, 
when we all felt an imperative call to delay no longer 
the assistance which our friends and brothers, already 
wearied and almost discouraged by long and apparently 
unavailing labors in the field, needed." ''Not long be 
soldiers! " Oh, No! Thou witness brave and true, not long! 
A few short months more, and that loved name was written 
among the martyrs whose testimony is sealed. But still 
there was need of more testimony, and the martyr blood 



MARTYBDOM, 139* 

was not exhausted. While I am writing comes another 
letter from his bosom friend, who has gone to take his place, 
and he writes: ''Though army life is, in itself, the most 
loathsome and unpleasant condition in which I ever found 
myself, the cause, liberty, country and humanity, make 
it a glorious thing to be a soldier, raising the meanest 
private above all vulgar destiny. I am glad I am here, for 
the post of duty is the post of safety." 

Such men are valid and true witnesses. They testify in 
behalf of their country and ours, that she is a nation living 
and worthy to be loved. And no man can reject their 
testimony. For the nation is but the union of such hearts 
as theirs. She lives in them and while they live she lives 
also. And their love of country is a reflection, shining over 
earth and into heaven, of the loveliness of the land that hath 
cherished them and for which they freely die. 

Solon, wisest of the seven wise men of Greece, came to 
the court of Croesus, the richest of kings. The monarch 
exhibited all his treasures, and then asked his guest who 
was the happiest man he had found in all his travels. The 
sage replied: ''Tellus, the Athenian." ''Why?" said the 
King. ^'Because," said Solon, "Tellus saw the pros- 
perity of his country, and children fair and good, and 
children born to all of them and all surviving; so the course 
of his life was good, but its end was most splendid, for his 
country was attacked and he came to her rescue and died 
in the hour of victory." The King, disappointed, asked: 
"And who was the next?" Solon replied: " Cleobis and 
Bito." And who were Cleobis and Bito, that they should 
be called happier than King Croesus? They were young 
men of Argos, victors in the Olympic games, whose mother 
was high priestess of Hera, the goddess of the city, and on 
a great festival their mother was to be borne upon a car 
from the city to the temple, five miles away. The day came 



140 LECTUBES. 

and the hour, and the multitude were there to join in the 
great procession, but the cattle were not yet come from the 
pasture, and there sat the priestess. A moment's pause and 
forth came those two sons and took the yoke upon their 
own strong and true shoulders, and moved on, followed by 
the wondering multitude, across the five long miles of thirsty 
plain and then up the steep ascent till they brought the car 
to the gates of the goddess. '' And all the men blessed the 
strength of the young men, and the woman blessed the 
mother. What sons she had! And she overjoyed, lifted up 
her hands to the goddess and prayed that her sons, who had 
honored her so, might have whatsoever gift was best for 
man to receive. And so, when the festival was done, they 
lay down to sleep in the temple, and they woke no more. 
And therein," says Herodotus, ''the Deity showed that it is 
l>etter for man to die than to live." 

Even so we have seen our mother, in the day that was 
to bear her on to honor as high priestess among the nations 
or to leave her desolate. We had trusted that she would be 
borne on, as she had been borne before, by circumstances. 
We thought that the moral sympathy of the world and 
the mighty voice of Christianized humanity would give 
security or victory. But when the hour came ''the oxen 
were not come from the pasture." The nations, upon whose 
moral support we had counted, stood aloof and seemed 
willing to profit by the humbling of the high priestess of 
the hopes of mankind, and so they "passed by on the 
other side." It was well. For it was our right to vindicate 
the cause of our own mother. She had sons who had shown 
themselves Olympic victors in every peaceful emulation of 
civilized man, and if those sons would not help her, it were 
shame that she should be borne on by any others. 

And the sons were ready. The flag that floated in every 
sea was not to be lowered and unavenged. The race whose 
energy was known and felt in every land were not to be 



MARTYRDOM. 141 

motherless by their own fault. The sons have put their 
own necks to the yoke, and they are bearing the mother on, 
not only in the fierce shock of battle, but in the patience of 
long weary marches and dreary anxious night-watches, 
bearing up amid the violence of foes and the errors of friends; 
in the suffering of the camp, the hospital and the prison, 
year after year, through all the manifold martyrdom of war. 
Many a weary mile is behind them already, marked by the 
graves of them that have sunk by the way. And as they 
fall the loving tears of the car-borne mother mingle with 
their martyr blood, and make the soil so sacred! It is the 
soil which was stained by the blood of the slave, and how 
could it be purified but by the blood of martyrs? But 
thankfully the mother sees that the car moves on; those 
sacred graves are not left to be stained again. Where is 
the son of America that will give them up ? We of the West 
exult to see our Mississippi flow free from its fountain to its 
end. And yet I know not but that we ought to admire even 
more the testimony of our Eastern brothers, so steadfast 
through years of weary labor, wasting disease and cruel 
defeat. 

But still on moves the car. Half the distance is meas- 
ured, and if the steepest ascent still remains, yet on it is the 
temple full in sight, and if the sons who remain be worthy 
of those who are fallen, the day is not far hence, when, by 
favor of the Most High, our mother shall be at its portals. 

And see, as the car moves, how the procession is falling 
in behind it. The nations that stood aloof, waiting to see 
the humbling of her that sat as a queen, are ^^ blessing the 
fortitude of her sons " and preparing to do her honor. And 
well they may, for though she is our mother, she is, as we 
have said, a priestess of blessing for them all. When the 
verdict is rendered, we shall not be able to claim those 
martyrs as only our own. We are told that the Argives, 
and not merely their own family, set up the statues of 



142 LECTURES, 

Cleobis and Bito at Delphi. And so our common human- 
ity, which has long ago claimed our Washington, will set 
up the remembrance of these, our thousands of true young 
men, in the shrine of its heart of hearts. For, in the language 
of that letter which I was reading a little while ago, they 
offer themselves, not only for country, but, at the same time, 
for liberty and for humanity. 

Thus our martyrs have taught us that there are objects 
more desirable to man than this bodily life; that there is a 
whole greater than our individual self; that there are bless- 
ings lying beyond this life. Martyrdom is our assurance 
of the greater reality of things invisible; of liberty, country, 
humanity, immortality. Deity. 

How much more witnessing may be needed before this 
present case is decided, we know not. But the martyr blood 
already shed, assures us, and may assure the world, that the 
future witnesses will not be wanting. Our brothers and our 
sons shall not be left to die in vain. If, after they, like 
Cleobis and Bito, are ''held in that blessed end" of death in 
piety for our mother, and so have secured the second blessing 
of the Grecian Sage; if, after that, it still remains that the 
men of gray hairs, even they who have seen their children's 
children, shall rally at their country's call, there will not be 
wanting those who will aspire to his first ])rize, the most 
splendid death of Tellus, the Athenian, and will exchange 
their gray locks for a crown of glory in the final hour of 
victory to the land which has been to them successively 
mother and bride and daughter. 

Let these, our martyrs, then, teach us the reality and the 

beauty of a higher and a better life. Each of them saith 

to each of us: 

"Be just and fear not, 
LetaU the ends thou aimst at he thy country's, 
Thy God's, and truth's. Then if thou fall'st. Oh Brother, 
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr." 



MABTTBDOM. 143 

''Blessed," indeed, for that martyrdom shall not be in 
vain. It is most refreshing and assuring to see how the cause 
for which martyrs die has been unfolding itself to the soul 
of man since the ancient days. Leonidas and his Spartans 
died for liberty and for country. Our martyrs die '-for 
liberty, for country and for humanity." And so at last 
there is in their testimony a meaning, which will 
shine even at that great tribunal where shall be gathered 
all nations. Their longings are sure of their fulfilment 
at last, in that Jerusalem which is above, which is free, and 
is the mother of us all, and here in this world, in that 
''peace on earth, goodwill toward men," which the angels 
sung when the blessed Prince of Martyrs was born. 



VIII. 

OUR MARTYRS. 



Our Martyrs. 



The Record 
of the Sons of Beloit College in the War for Union and Freedom, 

1861-1865. 
Bead at the dedication of the Memorial Hall of Beloit College. 

The closing of the war was a Commencement Day of 
the nation; the ending of a long term of discipline, and its 
accession to the new degree of Magistra Artmm^ Queen of 
Civilization. The ordeal which preceded it was the exami- 
nation, which tested the results of that Puritan system of 
education, by which the nation had been trained for more 
than two hundred years. 

The aim of that education was to make men; its organi- 
zation was the Christian College standing beside the Church, 
and surrounded by Public Schools. The soul of it was a 
training in the truths of the word of God, and in the enthu- 
siasms of the most heroic times and peoples, supported by 
ecientific culture becoming continually more manifold as 
science itself should be enlarged. 

As the developments of the war have been reviewed, the 
question has been pressed upon each of those Institutions 
which still retained the old idea of the fathers, that the cen- 
ter of a system of education must be the training in the divine 
and the heroic; the question. What have been the results 
of your training? Where are the men whom you have pre- 
pared for the need of your country and of mankind? 

For a general answer, the system can call up the whole 
nation whom it has educated, the great army of the republic, 
which sprang up at the country's call all over that region, 
between the 40th and 48th parallels of latitude, from sea to 
sea, which King James called New England. 

147 



148 LECTURES. 

Also in the East, particular colleges have been proud to 
point to their own sons in the field. In this Northwest, too, 
whence came the power which decided the war, the question 
has been put to the young College which had been planted 
here, Where were thy sons when the land had need of them ? 

The answer, modestly given three years ago, was received 
with such favor, that the guardians of the College appointed 
that an enduring testimonial should be prepared, in this 
building, not only of approval of the past but of example 
for the future. That memorial is now ready; and the ques- 
tion comes again, after three years of thought and further 
study and reflection. Shall the garland be bestowed, and the 
young mother, but twenty-one years of age to-day, sit hence- 
forth tower-crowned as foster mother of heroes ? 

If she is, though by no seeking of her own — for she and 
her sons alike have only sought to do their duty — if how- 
ever, she is a candidate for such honors, she must not shrink 
from standing before you, the parents who have committed 
their sons to her nurture and the wide community who have 
called for their service, and answering such questions as these: 

1. Did the sons of the College answer the country's call, 
not in exceptional cases, but in such numbers as to justify the 
honor to be paid to them as a body? 

2. Was their service a local one, or was it so general as 
to warrant this general testimonial from the wide Northwest, 
and even from distant parts of the land? 

3. Did they show themselves capable men, such as should 
come from an Institution which professes to train in thoughts 
as well as in enthusiasms ? 

4. Were they brave and true men, faithful unto death, 
so as to be worthy of an undying honor? 

Let her reply to each question. 

I. How many and what proportion of the sons of the 
College answered the call? 



OUR MARTYRS. 149 

When the war came, the College had sent forth but ten 
classes, and only eight hundred young men had been in it. 
This number has since been increased to fifteen hundred, 
of whom, however, more than half were, at the time of the 
war, too young for service, or had died before, or were 
otherwise disqualified to serve, or their record is not known. 
Of the seven hundred and fifty who may remain, we have the 
names of more than four hundred as in the service; more 
than half of all who could be there, and more than a fourth 
of all, older or younger^ living or dead, who have ever been 
in the College; and this proportion may indicate that those 
who remained at home were not uninterested in the cause, but 
bore their part in that grand support, which the armies in 
the field received at home. 

II. Is this a local object and is Beloit College merely a 
Beloit institution ? 

The citizens of Beloit do not fail to recognize the 
honor done them by the representatives of all this wide 
region, in not only choosing this, their loved city, for the 
site of the College of this pivotal section of our land, but in 
calling it by their name. 

They keep in view their pledge to cherish it by their 
prayers, sympathies and gifts. That their enthusiasms are 
its enthusiasms, this vicinity has shown by furnishing one 
hundred of the four hundred soldiers and even a larger pro- 
portion of the honored dead. They have come forward also 
to bear a part in this memorial, and it is in their hearts to do 
more yet. But these young men, as they fought for all the 
country, so they represented it all. 

Shall we call up the regiments in which they stood, and 
see what an army they form ? There on the far left is Maine; 
then Massachusetts, with four regiments, and Connecticut; 
then New York wath seven more; Ohio two; Michigan 
two; and Indiana one, bring us to the dense center; 



150 LEGTUBE8. 

fifty-five regiments from Wisconsin; fifty-six from Illinois; 
ten from Iowa; five from Minnesota; and then the long right 
wing, Nebraska and Kansas and California. But the muster 
is not yet complete. In front of the central mass stand Mis- 
souri and Kentucky, and Louisiana, and those regiments 
marked on our rosters by ''A. D." — ^'African Descent" 
they say it means; Anno Domini is our first thought, and 
perhaps our last, for, in our night, their dark brows brought 
light and the acceptable year of the Lord. But this army 
shall not be unsuj)ported nor uncomforted. There are the 
mortar boats and the gunboats and the ships of Avar; the 
nurses in the hospitals and the Sanitary Commission, the 
Christian Commission, — all that humane and Christian bless- 
ing, by which the elements which are forming the better 
future glorify the final struggle. 

III. But did these many men prove themselves capable 
men ? 

As children of so young a mother, they entered the war, as 
a rule, as privates. Many had not been long enough in the serv- 
ice to have their merit known when the war closed, or they 
were disabled, or gave their lives. But of the whole four hun- 
dred, two hundred and eighteen, considerably more than 
half, earned honorable positions as commissioned or non- 
commissioned officers. One hundred and forty-two bore 
commissions, — among them, four brigadier-generals, eleven 
colonels, or lieutenant-colonels, nine majors, four chaplains, 
fourteen surgeons and lieutenant- surgeons, nine adjutants, 
quartermasters or commissaries, forty-four captains and forty- 
three lieutenants. There were also seventy-six non-commis- 
sioned officers. 

IV. But did they prove themselves true men in action? 
When the call to arms came, the present and the former 

members of the College were, wherever found, among the first 
to answer it. They appear among the first seventy-five thou- 
sand, in the Ohio, Iowa, and California, as well as the 



OUR MARTYRS. 151 

Illinois and Wisconsin lines. Three of the same name shall 
represent the spirit of all. 

Fort Sumpter fell April 1 4th, 1861; the proclamation of the 
President was issued on the 15th, and that of the governor 
of Illinois for six regiments on the 16th. Also on the same 
April 16th, Paul A. C. Goddard, returning through Illinois 
from five years of army service on the frontier, gave his name 
in the 8th Illinois Infantry without waiting to see his home. 
He re-enlisted for the three years, and died in the service 
October 21st, 1863. Frederick W. Goddard, perhaps on the 
same day, enlisted in the 1st Wisconsin and afterward in 
the 3rd Missouri. The battle of Spring Hill, Tenn., found 
him waiting for a commission as adjutant in the 22nd Wis- 
consin and not required to be in the field, except by his own 
choice. He chose the battle, and fell there March 5th, 1863. 
The other, whom we do not name because he lives, was not 
liable to duty, on account of lameness, but by his entreaties 
forced his way into service for the short, and again for the 
long term, and did his duty until disabled by wounds. Dur- 
ing the campaign of 1861, the sons of Beloit were on the 
Potomac with the 1st Wisconsin at Falling Waters, with 
the 2nd Wisconsin at Bull Run, and with the 1st California 
beside Col. Baker when he fell at Ball's Bluff; they were in 
West Virginia in the body-guard of General McClellan, in 
those days of his early glory at Philippi, Buckhannon, Rich 
Mountain and Beverly, and in the Yth Ohio at Cross Lanes, 
where fell, August 25th, 1861, Bureord Jeakins, the 
scholar and the Christian, whom, though he was here so long 
ago, we remember as if it were yesterday. 

In the West, they were in the force that held Cairo and 
fought at Belmont. They were in the 1st Iowa at General 
Lyon's side when he fell at Wilson's Creek; in the 20th and 
the 33rd Illinois at Fredericktown; with Col. Mulligan at 
Lexington; in the body-guard of Gen. Fremont; and, on 



152 LEGTUBE3. 

the 16th of August, George O. Felt, a soldier full of 
promise, was killed at Palmyra. 

On the 21st of November, Lieut. J. Lyford Peavy 
left Michigan, leaving enthusiastic professional hopes and a 
newly wedded wife; on the 30th, before daylight, he died with 
fever in Baltimore. He had written, ^'Our brave and pre- 
cious ones must die." '^Should we falter or stop to count the 
cost? God will guide all." 

The search for our men in the campaign of 1862 reveals 
the breadth of the war. On the 6th of February their 
regiments were with Burnside at his victory at Roanoke 
Island, and with Grant at Fort Henry. In ten days more, 
they were at the fall of Fort Donelson. Meanwhile they 
were also in Kansas, where they closed the eyes of their loved 
fellow-soldier, Feanklii!^ Prindle, at Leavenworth, February 
2 7th. A comrade says : ' ' I never saw one die in such triumph. '* 
The 6th of March found them fighting at Pea Ridge in Ar- 
kansas, and at the same time sailing out from Hampton Roads 
with Gen. Butler, bound for Ship Island, where, on the 8th 
of April, Arthur W. Mason died. When Sumpter fell he said : 
''My father is old and infirm, my brothers have families, I must 
go to represent our family." He gave up his contract to teach 
and enlisted by telegraph. On the disbanding of his first com- 
pany he enlisted again, and kept to his duty until his dis- 
charge came and he was laid to rest ''in the barren sands of 
that lonely isle." 

The 6th and 7th of April reveal them in many regiments 
on the field of Shiloh. Thence, true Milton Rood of the 
12th Iowa is borne away by his foes to die in captivity; and 
Captain Silas W. Field, of the 11th Illinois, is borne away 
by his friends, mortally wounded, to die in hospital at Padu- 
cah. May 9th, 1862, leaving a memory full of honor, affection 
and Christian hope. There at the close of that first terrible 
Sabbath day, Quincy E. Pollock lay upon the field in the 



OUB MAETTBS. 153 

midst of the enemy, and wrote these words on a soiled 
paper with a feeble pencil: '^ Dear Father and Mother: While 
I write I am on the battlefield, wounded, and think I will 
die, as there is no doctor near. God bless you and me." The 
victory of the next day restored him to his friends, but 
could not heal his wound. He died, April 11th, in a hospital 
at Mound City. He had embraced the Christian hope in the 
College. He left College to enlist in the army, not expecting 
to live to the close of the war, but saying ' ' that his life was no 
better than that of others who had gone." In the camp prayer- 
meeting he told his comrades ' ' that, if he fell in battle, he 
knew into whose hands he would fall," and he is now in the 
bosom of the Father. 

Following up the results of Shiloh, many of our men move 
to Corinth, and luka, while others sweep with Mitchell 
through Tennessee, Northern Alabama, and Georgia; others 
again go down the Mississippi and occupy Columbus, and 
Island No. 10, where some remain in command of the garrison, 
while others still move on to Memphis, and before midsum- 
mer are in communication with their old schoolmates who 
had gone round by way of the Atlantic and the Gulf. On 
the western border also, they are moving on to Fort Riley, 
where Eugene H. Tuttle dies May 11th, 1862. 

By this time the Army of the Potomac is in motion, and 
our men have their share in all the battles and the sufferings 
of the Peninsular campaign. In May and June, among 
those who sank under them was Jeeome B. Davis, a true 
soldier, man and Christian, who died May 21st, 1862. In 
the heat of July we glance westward to see the 2nd Wiscon- 
sin cavalry in the fight at Cotton Plant, and the ride of the 
1st Wisconsin cavalry through the mazes of Arkansas. We 
return in August to find the Iron Brigade doing all that men 
could do to save the army and the country at Gainesville and 
the second battle of Bull Run. In September again, in the 



154 LECTURES. 

same brigade and in many more, they are at South Mountain 
and at Antietam, where, in the SYth New York, falls Henry 
Cooper, stanch and true there as he was here. At the same 
time others are engaged with the Dakota uprising in Minne- 
sota, and others again are hastening to join the force which 
met Bragg at Perryville on the 8th of October. As the 
year draws to its close we are called away to Missouri, 
where John Gregg Lambert of the Benton Hussars died 
November 23rd, and then to the extreme northwest of Arkan- 
sas, where fell, at Prairie Grove, December Y, 1862, Edmond 
Daw^es, a true man and '' a devoted Christian in the army as 
well as at home." Then, at the extreme East, comes the battle 
of Fredericksburg, December 11-15. In this year, too, they 
are upon the water as well as the land. Jefferson D. Florey 
of the mortar boat service died August 9. 

The year 1862 closes and the year 1863, the first year of 
liberty, opens in the East with the Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation, firm and clear even in the moment of disasters, and 
in the West with the successive defeat and victory of the 
long struggle at Murfreesboro. Among the sacrifices that 
bought that victory was Evan W. Grubb, of the Pennsyl- 
vania cavalry, then on Gen. Rosecrans' body-guard. He 
was, as his comrade testifies, '^a soldier who could at all times 
be depended upon for any duty that required fortitude or en- 
durance." He was instantly killed in the discharge of his 
duty. There, also, Francis H. Caswell and Dudley H. 
CowLES sank with wounds, which, aggravated by the suffer- 
ings of captivity, brought to each of them the call to pass 
from a rebel prison to the freedom and rest of the Jerusalem 
above. Cowles enlisted in the 22nd Illinois, June 25th, 
1861. During the eighteen months of his service, '^ he was in 
seventeen battles, aside from all his exposures in skirmishes,'* 
and the 22nd were generally in the front. In the sum- 
mer of 1862 they were in Alabama, and during the fall they 



OUR MABTYHS. 155 

were in the force which held Middle Tennessee after Buell's 
retreat. 

In December he wrote to his uncle, Rev. S. Cowles, from 
Nashville: " We have been stationed here for five months. I 
have heard nothing from the outside world until yesterday. 
My life has often been in peril, my clothes and cap often cut 
with bullets, but none has grazed my flesh. Hitherto my 
Heavenly Father has protected me." ^' Six days after this 
date," writes his uncle, ^'the first day of the battle in Mur- 
f reesboro, he was struck by a bullet in his left breast, which 
came out in his right, inflicting a dangerous wound, but not 
mortal, if he could have quiet and care. But he was taken 
prisoner, and forced to march eleven miles, if I am informed 
correctly, and then trundled in an open car over a miserably 
rough road to Montgomery, Ala., where he sank down and 
died on the 20th of January, 1863. The account of his 
death which a fellow-prisoner gave, was that of a calm, 
triumphant Christian, sinking away in peace, in the hands of 
his enemies, far removed from father and mother, brother or 
sister. Thus his young life closed at the age of twenty-two 
years." 

Francis Hemenway Caswell was born in Siam in Asia. 
His father lived and died a missionary. He graduated 
in 1862 and cherished the hope of preaching the gospel in the 
land of his birth. But very soon after his graduation came 
a call for 600,000 men, and he felt that his country needed him. 
He joined the 74th Illinois, which reached Louisville Septem- 
ber 30th, and Nashville in December. On the 23rd of De- 
cember, in view of the expected battle, he wrote to his 
mother: '^Do not allow yourself to be anxious for my wel- 
fare or fate; for the purposes of God concerning me have not 
changed, and if I should lose my life suddenly and soon, it 
will be no more than carrying out the great purposes of God, 
and they are all just right, you know." Yes ! but they are 



156 LECTUBES. 

dark to us ! In that same fearful morning, December 31st, 
1862, he, too, fell wounded into the hands of the enemy, and 
was taken to Montgomery, then to Atlanta, then to Rich- 
mond, where he died February 4th, 1863. ''His comrades 
testify to his coolness and bravery in time of conflict and to his 
consistent Christian character." Such was the purpose of 
God respecting the son of a missionary, who hoped for 
his father's work. Like his, in spirit, were the aspira- 
tions of the other young men whom we are numbering here. 
If God thought their lives best given for their country's 
cause, we will remember that ''His purposes are all just 
right, you know." 

Such costly sacrifices marked the last day of the year 
1862. But they were not for naught, nor in vain. The 
next day, January 1st, 1863, brought the Proclamation of Lib- 
erty, which completed the Declaration of Independence and 
made a cause in which death itself was a victory. The same 
i^^ew Year's day brought the good omen of a great triumph 
upon the field of disaster on which they had fallen. 

On the Mississippi also, their schoolmates, who had part 
in the repulse at the Yazoo Bluffs in the last days of Decem- 
ber, shared also in the January victory at Arkansas Post, 
while others were driving back the rebel inroad from Mis- 
souri. 

During the season of preparation for the great events of 
the next campaign, died, on the I7th of January, 1863, 
Henry L. Kingsley of the 105th Illinois, young in years 
but full of patriotic enthusiasm; and on the 28th, at Memphis, 
Thomas L. Seacord of the 72nd Illinois. He had looked 
forward to the ministry of the gospel of peace. The Master 
had another call for him. On the 5th of March, at Spring Hill, 
Tennessee, Frederick W. Goddard met the fate which has 
already been recorded. In the same month, Edward 
R, Barber of the 24th Wisconsin, was sinking under the 



OUB MABTYB8. 15T 

disease with which he died at a hospital in New Albany on 
the Yth of May, sustained by the faith which he embraced 
while in College. There was no truer man. It was our loss, 
but true manhood cannot die. 

Meanwhile the spring finds those who are in the field full 
of action. In the last weeks of April they ride with Col. 
Grierson through the length of the state of Mississippi, and 
with Hasbrook Davis up to the fortifications of Richmond. 

Both were parts of great designs. The plan of Gen. 
Hooker's great battle of Chancellorsville was commenced by 
throwing the Iron Brigade over the Rappahannock at Fitts 
Hugh Crossing, below Fredericksburg, on the 29th of April. 
A broad river was to be passed in open boats under the fire of 
the enemy's sharp-shooters. It was bravely and successfully 
done, but on the hither side, his nobility of form making him 
a conspicuous mark, fell Captain Alexander Gordon of the 
7th Wisconsin, a soldier without fear and without reproach. 

It would be glory to bear an equal part in the work 
of the Iron Brigade, to which that regiment belonged. 
Of Captain Gordon we have the testimony of the com- 
manding officer of another regiment of the brigade '' that in 
the field of battle, in the camp and on the march, he always 
seemed to be the ruling spirit of his regiment. " And from 
another: " I saw him in one battle save his line from giving 
way at the critical moment, by his presence and daring. I 
have seen him conspicuous for his good conduct always, and 
so prominently that upon two occasions I thought him in 
command, as he seemed to be the soul and spirit of his line, 
and it was not until the battle was over that I found he was 
but a subordinate." 

While the battle was raging on the Rappahannock, Gen. 
Grant has thrown his army across the Mississippi, and a 
rapid succession of victories, at Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, 
Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills and Black River, 
brought them to the rear of Vicksburg on the night of the 18th 



158 LEGTUBE8. 

of May. Without delay, on the morrow the lines are formed 
for the assault, but before the charge is ordered a rebel shell 
cuts down WiiLLiAM W. WoEKS of the 72nd Illinois. On 
the same day, just before the battle, he had written in his 
diary: ''If I fall, I lay down my life, deeming it only a fit 
sacrifice for the life of my country." He did not overvalue 
the life of his country, but how precious it grows as such 
lives are hidden in it. 

But more were yet to be added; while the siege was in 
progress. Pardon E. Caepentee, of the 12th Wisconsin 
Battery, died at Memphis — gentle, faithful and not forgotten. 

At Port Hudson, the other key of the Mississippi, the 
men of the 4th Wisconsin were cooperating with their fel- 
low-students in many regiments at Vicksburg; but we must 
return to the Iron Brigade and their fellows on the Potomac. 

After Chancellorsville the war rolled through Virginia 
and Maryland into the heart of Pennsylvania, and on the 1st 
of July, 90,000 rebels were confronted by 60,000 loyal soldiers 
at Gettysburg. The Iron Brigade was again in the front, 
and in the ranks of the same Yth Wisconsin, fell Jaeed H. 
K2TAPP. His lieutenant testifies that ''he was singularly 
brave and daring, always at his post, never shrinking from 
duty." 

Like most of the slain of that first day, his body was not 
recognized, and " rests beneath that sad, solitary, melancholy 
wo.d ' Unknown ' which marks so many hundreds of graves 
of our dear braves." 

So our particular griefs are lost in the common sorrow 
and thanksgiving, and it is for us to resolve in the words 
pronounced over those same graves, by him whose martyrdom 
was destined to crown all of theirs, " highly resolve that the 
dead shall not have died in vain." 

Next came the Fourth of July, 1863, that high day, 
signalized for all time by the triumphs of Gettysburg and 
Vicksburg. 



OUR MARTYRS. 159 

But all the war was not at these two points; our men in 
the 28th Wisconsin joined in a celebration of the same anni- 
versary by repelling double their number at Helena, in Ar- 
kansas. On the 11th of the same July one of them was 
among the white officers who led the historic charge of the 
54th Massachusetts on Fort Wagner, at Charleston Harbor. 

The Army of the Cumberland also has moved at last, June 
24th, from its New Year's battle-field at Murfreesboro, and, 
in ten days more has driven the enemy from Middle Tennessee. 
During its next season of rest and preparation for passing 
the Cumberland mountains, the 24th Wisconsin, from which 
Barber had died in May, is again called to lose Jekemiah 
DooLEY, who died at Anderson station, on the line between 
Tennessee and Alabama, on the 5th of August. He was born 
in Ireland but loyal and true to the land of his adoption. In 
the operations of the remainder of the year, especially in the 
great battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, our men were 
everywhere in action, or on guard; and on the last day of 
October, Paul A. C. Goddard of the 8th Illinois Infantry, 
already named as the first of the sons of the college to enlist 
in the war, expired at Yicksburg. 

The autumn witnessed the strife for the key of 
the South. September saw the Army of the Cumberland 
broken at Chickamauga, beleaguered at Chattanooga, but still 
resolute. October brought them relief and the '^ Coming 
Man." November saw three victories at Lookout Mountain, 
Mission Ridge and Knoxville. In these operations the sons 
of Beloit bore their full share, though we are not called to 
record the fall of any one of them. 

On the 16th of March, 1864, died J. Davight Stevens, 
sergeant in the 20th Wisconsin Infantry. His father was 
one of the original trustees of the College, and had been for 
many years before a missionary, first to the Indians and after- 
wards to the pioneer whites of the Northwest; the son had 



160 LECTURES. 

done his duty as a true Christian soldier, and sank at last 
under disease contracted during the siege of Vicksburg. 

On the 15th of February, 1864, William L. Knight, 
though but a boy, enlisted as a musician in the 59th Massa- 
chusetts Infantry. Detailed to care for the sick, his earnest 
attention brought sickness upon himself, of which he died 
May 21st of the same year. So young, but he had earned a 
place in our lasting gratitude. 

In ten days more. May 31st, 1864, Lieutenant Henry 
Meacham of the 2nd U. S. C. Troops, died of the yellow fever 
at Key West, Florida. He enlisted in the 2nd Michigan 
Regiment, May 25th, 1861; was true to his duty, and died 
as his officer testifies, '^like a Christian," leaving remem- 
brances pleasant though sad, among his comrades and brave 
friends. 

Already in the same month the same 2nd Michigan 
Regiment had been in the fearful battle of the 
Wilderness. As they enter the fight on the 10th we 
see among them a face which many of us saw in its 
childhood, William Pearl Lathrop, eldest son of one of 
the earliest Professors both of Beloit College and of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. The remains of the father repose in 
our own cemetery. The son, born in Vermont, educated in 
Wisconsin, serving in the ranks, first of California and then 
of Michigan, disappeared in the Wilderness of Virginia. No 
man knoweth his resting-place, but he is not forgotten. 

In two days more yet another in the same Michigan line, 
Horace Turner of the 2nd Regiment, fell mortally wounded 
at Spottsylvania and died May 16th. His captain says: ^' He 
was a brave and true soldier, a faithful and consistent Chris- 
tian, and lives fresh in the memory of his loving comrades." 

On the 24th, died Whitney Tibballs, of the 5th Wis- 
consin Regiment, from a wound received in the Wilderness on 
the 10th. Within the last six months he laid hold on the 



OUR MARTYRS. 161 

Christian hope. On the 1st of May he had written six reso- 
lutions in his diary, of which the fifth was: *< I will be brave 
in the battle-field." and the sixth, ''I will be brave in refusing 
to do evil." Thus prepared to die and prepared to live, he 
saw the battle coming. He was detailed to tarry with the 
baggage, but he went to his captain and begged the privilege 
of going into the battle. '' You are unwise," said a comrade, 
<'we are going to have a fearful fight." He replied: "1 know 
that perfectly well, and choose to take my chance with the 
rest of the boys." He took his chance. God knew what 
was best for him. He was borne to the rear and in two 
weeks more received the prize of him that overcometh. 

The record of that month of May is not yet closed. Cap- 
tain Marshall W. Patton is known to many here as the 
boy with the bearing of a man, whose distinguished valor in the 
Iron Brigade gave him promotion beyond his years, but not 
beyond his merits. He fell on the 15th as he was leading 
his company in the 22nd Wisconsin to the charge at Resaca 
in Georgia and he died on the 18th. 

The army moved on ; and in front of the 74th Illinois at 
the terrible assault on Kenesaw, sank Lieut. -Col. James B. 
Kerr, whom all Winnebago County knows, as a scholar, a 
hero and a man. He threw his sword toward his friends, his 
person fell into the hands of his foes, among whom he died 
at Atlanta, July 3rd, 1864. 

Meanwhile had occurred the disaster at Guntown in Mis- 
sissippi, where fell, in the 95th Illinois, the noble Colo:n^el, 
and by brevet after his death. General, Thomas W. Hum- 
phrey, and with him Lieut. Stephen A. Rollins, known and 
esteemed by many here to-day, as well as by his fellow-sol- 
diers. CoL. Humphrey was grandson of a colonel in the 
Revolutionary army and was worthy of his parentage. 

While these things have passed, the Army of the Potomac 
has gathered around Richmond. On the 18th of June, cheer- 



162 LEGTUBES. 

inghis men to the assault on Petersburg, falls Lieut. Free- 
man B. Riddle. I need not praise him here among the 
multitude of those who knew him and loved him and will not 
forget him. He was what all knew that he would be. 

Next we are hurried back to Georgia, where falls Albert 
Walker of the 22nd Wisconsin, who had just entered Col- 
lege when his country called him and he gave her his life. 

Then again we are called to Petersburg, where we find a 
regiment of those new-made men with dark skins, ready for 
the onset. It is not our first view of these warriors. In 
thirteen at least of their regiments, sons of Beloit bore com- 
missions; among the rest one whom their suffrages have now 
placed in the Congress of the United States, worthily repre- 
senting in the capitol of the nation the capital of the state 
which he had educated. Also we claim one of the captains 
who led the 24th Massachusetts in the historic charge upon 
Fort Wagner. He happily still lives; not so his fellow in 
renown, so were he equaled with him in his fate, who led 
the 29th United States Colored Infantry to the breach at 
Petersburg, where Captain Hector H. Aiken fell July 30th, 
and died August 1. 

In the same service, on the 25th of the same July, but far 
away in Arkansas, died Captain Azel D. Hayward of the 
VOth United States Colored Infantry. 

During this summer many of you, who were students of 
the College, served as '' Hundred-day men," stationed at Mem- 
phis, and your loved and revered Professor Blaisdell was 
your chaplain, and here on the 14th of August you stood 
round the dying bed of William H. Shumaker, and on the 
21st around the remains of Frank E. Woodruff, killed at 
his sentry post by Forrest's raiders, and you wished that you 
might be no less true to the love of God and of man than they. 

Yet again on the 3rd of November of the same year, the 
battle of Franklin, Tenn. , ie marked by the fall at the head 



OUR MABTYRS. 163 

of his regiment of the gallant Col. Poeter C. Olson of the 
36th Illinois. 

There yet remains one more martyr's name, Almeron N. 
Graves of the 3rd Wisconsin, who fell at Averysboro, N. C, 
March 15th, 1865, the last, and faithful to the last. 

Thus twenty-seven of the forty-six died by wounds, and 
the rest, good and true men all, proved how brave men can 
suffer bravely and die bravely without the excitement of 
the field. Their lives and their deaths were not, and they 
shall not be, in vain. 



SERMONS. 



THE PREACHER TO THE POOR. 



The Preacher to the Poor. 



Matthew xi: 4, 5. 
Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see, the 
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and 
the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached 
to them. 

This was Christ's own argument in proof of His Messiah- 
ship. John the Baptist, having accomplis-hed his illustrious 
mission of proclaiming the coming of the Lord, was now in 
prison, reaping the reward which the rulers of this earth are 
accustomed to give to fidelity when it reproves them. Here 
he heard much of the progress of Jesus of Nazareth, and, as 
we elsewhere learn, rejoiced in His increase. We cannot 
suppose that after the witness which he had borne, both to the 
character and the person of the Christ, John was himself in 
doubt as to whether this Jesus was indeed He of whom Moses 
and the prophets did write. But his disciples, those especi- 
ally who had been attracted by the striking features of John's 
appearance and career, may very probably have found some 
difficulty in recognizing in the plain carpenter's son, who 
came eating and drinking, even with publicans and sin- 
ners, the glorious Messiah, whom their imaginations had pic- 
tured as about to come upon the earth with a splendor worthy 
of the expectation of so many ages. With their doubts and 
questionings they came to John in his prison-house, and it 
must have been to satisfy their incredulity that John sent 
two of them to Jesus with the question : ' ' Art thou He that 
should come or look we for another ? " 

Christ's reply was exactly addressed to their state of 
mind. It is in the form of a climax. ' ' Go and tell John 

167 



168 SEmiONS. 

what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear." Ye 
have seen my power over all maladies and infirmities of the 
body, and ye have seen yet a greater work, ^Hhe dead are 
raised." 

This was evidence which they could not gainsay. But it 
left the cause of their doubt untouched. They were still 
unable to reconcile His mighty works with this meek and un- 
assuming deportment. His miracles they had seen; and now 
they wished for a solution of the contradiction between His 
powers and His course. Nor were they disappointed, — though 
we may judge of their surprise at hearing Him state the very 
ground of their doubts, the preaching of the gospel to the 
poor, as the crowning evidence of His Messiahship. 

If we examine this answer we shall find that it comprises 
the evidence which the every-day life of Jesus gave of His 
character, and that all the parts of it are necessary to the 
completeness of that testimony. 

And, standing as it does, it furnishes full proof of the 
truth of his claim; and that in three several ways. 

First: It presents the fulfilment of prophecy. 

Secondly: It states the present visible evidence of His 
superhuman character and mission. 

Thirdly: It sets before us the life and spirit of Christian- 
ity in such a way that it commends itself to the belief of the 
thinking man. 

First: This reply records the fulfilment of the prophecies 
respecting the Messiah. 

The question had a particular reference to these. ' * Art 
thou He that should come? " And the answer is so framed 
as to remind the inquirers that Isaiah had not only said: 
' ' The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the 
deaf shall be unstopped, then shall the lame man leap as an 
hart and the tongue of the dumb shall sing," but that he 



THE PREACHEB TO THE POOR, 169 

had also declared that the Christ, Messiah, the '^Anointed," 
was *' anointed to preach good tidings to the meek," — 
was '^ sent to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim 
liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound. " 

All this was necessary to the completeness of the evi- 
dence from prophecy. It must be shown, not only that He 
had powers like those of the promised Deliverer, but that His 
character and career agreed with that of ' ' Him who was to 
come." 

Second: We have here the testimony which the life of 
Jesus presented of His exalted character and office. 

'^ It is written in your law," says the Savior, '' that the 
testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of 
myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me." 
^'The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the 
same works which I do, bear witness of me, that the 
Father hath sent me." And when the Jews came to Him in 
Solomon's Porch, and said: " How long dost thou make us to 
doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly," His answer 
was : ^'I told you and ye believed not; the works that I do 
in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. " 

The passage which we are now considering presents the evi- 
dence from miracles in the form in which it most inevitably 
precludes the possibility of any explanation which denies 
the truth of the claims of Jesus. First we have the miracles 
themselves, — healing all manner of diseases, and raising 
the dead. They were done in the presence of the people, the 
spectators were there, those who asked the question them- 
selves had seen them. Were they not the very seal of God 
set to the truth of His claim ? God would not give the special 
sanction of miraculous interposition, in order to give author- 
ity to a falsehood. If these works were from God, then 
they proved beyond question that he who did them was what 



170 8ERM0N8. 

he professed to be. And was any other supposition possible? 
Could it be that these works were not from God? Was 
it skilful magic? Could it be collusion with the evil one? 
First, neither of these would account for such works. For 
who ever knew magician or devil that could raise the dead? 
Still there might be a doubt remaining in some minds. For 
they had seen such wonders done by magic and knew so little 
of the powers of Beelzebub, that they were not prepared to 
affirm that anything was beyond such power. 

Christ was not accustomed to answer doubts as to the 
evidence of miracles by denying that such works could be 
attributed to other than divine agency. He knew that the 
minds in which such doubts arose required an answer of a 
different kind. Thev said: *' Thou castest out devils, through 
Beelzebub, prince of devils." Does Christ deny that Satan 
could cast out Satan? Not at all. But he presses the con- 
sideration that it is impossible to suppose that he would do 
so. So, here in the text. These disciples of John might 
have said : ' ' Certainly we see all these works. But it is easier 
to believe that it is all sleight of hand or Beelzebub, than to 
believe that this preacher to the rabble is the Christ, upon the 
distant anticipation of whose coming pious hearts have been 
looking with rapture ever since the fall of man. " To minds 
in such a frame as this, the argument in the text addresses 
itself wdth inevitable directness and power. It explains away 
nothing. It offers no apology. That calm voice of one 
having authority simply states the fact, ' ' I heal the sick, I 
raise the dead. I preach the gospel to the poor. " And there 
He leaves it. It was for them to take the facts and meet them 
fairly and draw their own conclusions. Was it the work of 
the devil? If so, then the arch-fiend has sent upon earth an 
agent endowed with powers such as he never gave to man 
before, and all for the purpose of preaching the gospel of 
righteousness and peace to the poor, whom his previous mach- 



THE PBEACHER TO THE POOR. 171 

inations had loaded with sorrows. Satan never sent such a 
missionary. Though, blessed be God, we believe that all 
his malice will be made to contribute to the glory of God, 
yet he never was known to task his utmost powers to con- 
trive and to carry out a plan whose direct and immediate 
object, as well as result, was to destroy his own kingdom. 

And the idea that all these works were done by some 
secret skill, or by some newly discovered principle in physi- 
ology is equally incompetent to account for the facts of the 
case. For, supposing that legerdemain were omnipotent, 
can we believe that one who was endowed with the free 
power of working such wonders at his will, would be content 
to spend his life as Jesus of Nazareth did? The man who 
could lead after him such multitudes; who could feed five 
thousand upon five loaves; who could heal the sick and raise 
the dead, and walk upon the waters and command the tem- 
pests, and pass alone and unarmed through crowds that were 
frantic for his destruction ; such a man might choose his place 
at the court of any monarch upon the earth, or, in defiance of 
earthly monarchs, He might have established himself upon 
the throne of universal dominion. And yet He spent His 
life in preaching to the poor. This was the problem which 
these doubting disciples of John were to solve. And it 
stands as an everlasting problem for those who maintain that 
Jesus of Nazareth was an impostor. Let them solve it if 
they can. If they can account for such powers united with 
such a course of lite, in a man whose whole life was an impos- 
ture, then they can comprehend a greater mystery than '' God 
manifest in the flesh." 

We must come, then, to the conclusion that this fact of 
Jesus preaching to the poor, so far from being proof that He 
was not from God, is not only strong evidence of His sin- 
cerity, but it is utterly irreconcilable with the idea that He 
acted under the influence of any evil or ambitious motives; 



172 8EBM0N8. 

and, moreover, is so very singular as to make it difficult to 
believe that this prophet was a mere man, and swayed by the 
motives which ordinarily govern human action. 

But, so far, our reasoning has been of a negative character. 
We have found ourselves unable to account for the life of 
Jesus upon the ordinary principles of human action. And 
now we are ready for the positive inquiry. Is such a life 
as this consistent with the claim that this Jesus was the 
Son of God? If it shall appear that it is so consistent, then 
our first surprise at such a course will become proof of the 
truly divine origin of the dispensation. For it is the pre- 
rogative of God to see, and in His own time to reveal, that 
fitness which is so hidden in the nature of things — those 
harmonies which are so deep and perfect as to escape the cas- 
ual notice or the undirected search of the human mind, 
but which, when pointed out by the finger of God, become 
luminous and eloquent testimonies to the unsearchable wis- 
dom of the Architect of the universe. 

Suppose that a blind man could be made to comprehend 
the physical structure of an eye, and then should at- 
tempt to divine the purpose for which it was intended. 
It would be an utter mystery to him still. But let the 
light in upon his own vision, and you reveal to him 
at once the design of that exquisite organization. The 
novelty and the completeness of the explanation concur to 
produce upon his mind the impression that the contriver of 
such adaptation was in truth the master of the secrets of the 
universe. So with the great doctrine of the Atonement. It 
is its perfect adaptation to the condition of a race that had 
sinned against a God of inflexible justice — together with the 
fact that it is such a scheme as man's intellect could never 
have invented — which proves it to be from God. If it had 
been left to us, the most sagacious human mind must have 
despaired of being able to devise a way of return. But, when 



THE PBEACHER TO THE POOR, 175 

the plan is unfolded, the sincere soul feels the grace of God 
bringing salvation. This is the evident mark of the wisdom 
of the Deity, and such proof of divinity we shall find in the 
life of Jesus, if it shall appear that a course of life so utterly 
the reverse of what we should previously have expected, com- 
mends itself to our judgment, as having been, after all, the 
course most exactly fitted to illustrate the character and per- 
form the mission of the Christ, the Son of the living God. 
We come then to the question: Is this preaching the gospel 
to the poor an employment fit to be the favorite occupation 
of the Messiah? Was such a course consistent with the dig- 
nity of a divine person? Did it comport with the greatness 
of the errand upon which He had come? Does it show that 
understanding of man's being and character and condition 
which indicates the mind of one who has the Creator's ac- 
quaintance with the works of His hand ? 

Was such an appearance, then, consistent with the dignity 
of the character of the Christ? Can we believe that He who 
was the Ruler of the world would come in such a garb? 

If that love, which is illimitable in its condescension as 
well as in its grandeur, could stoop to take the form of man, 
how was it fit that He should come? 

God in the beginning made man a living soul, with 
thoughts that wandered through eternity and immensity, and 
deathless capacities for suffering or enjoyment, and He placed 
him here for a brief space to choose for himself what he 
would be for eternity. 

Man, thus left, had surrounded himself with various trap- 
pings, and was spending that brief moment of life in striving, 
for that moment, to outshine his fellow man. Now, when it 
became necessary for the Son of God to appear on earth, how 
did it become him to treat this pomp? Would you have him 
come decked with the emblems which denote earthly roy- 
alty, or in that simple dignity of man as God made him? 



174 8ERM0N8. 

These outward badges are all very well in their place, but, 
wherever they occur, they are a confession of the weakness of 
human nature. The colors of the various precious stones 
are beautiful, but the perfect gem is the diamond, whose sur- 
face no substance can mar, but light shines freely through 
it and glistens in it. It was well for Herod and Augustus 
Caesar to surround themselves with the visible emblems of 
majesty. It was well for John the Baptist to come with 
raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins. 
But wherewith will ye array the Son of Man? No outward 
adorning that man could look upon and live was worthy of 
His character. If, then, the Christ could come upon earth and 
dwell among men at all, the garb of a man seeking no aid 
from the badges of this world's greatness, and preaching His 
gospel to rich and poor alike, was a fit garb; was it not the 
only garb in which it was worthy of His exalted character to 
appear ? 

Again, was the manner in which Jesus came suited to the 
purpose of Christ's advent? It was a serious errand upon 
which He had come. He was to bear the sins of a world and 
to restore fallen man to communion with his Maker. His 
business was not with kings as kings, but with men as men, 
standing all alike in the eye of God. It was no visit of form 
and ceremony. He would not leave the throne of His glory 
to deck Himself in the finery of oriental courts, nor to gain a 
temporal throne among the feeble atoms which He had created 
in this corner of His dominion. No! The Son of God had 
a far other errand here. He lived among men to give to men 
an example of holy life, and to teach them the truth which is 
able to make them wise unto salvation. And to do this He 
lived in that plain, familiar, common life, in which man's 
actions and character are known to all. He addressed Himself 
to that class to which belonged the great multitude of the 
souls whom He had come to save, and, by so doing, He practi- 



THE PREACHER TO THE POOR, 175 

cally proclaimed the great truth, which He was continually 
inculcating in His preaching, that the soul, the soul is the 
man. Such a being, voluntarily divesting Himself of all out- 
ward splendor, disregarding and contemning everything ex- 
cept the one end of doing good and working out the salvation 
of a fallen race, was a constant answer to the question: 
^'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul?" He came to men whose thoughts were 
so engrossed with the things that are seen and temporal, that 
they had forgotten alike the soul that was within themselves, 
and the world of spirits that lay boundless and endless just 
beyond the feeble, perishing fabric of temporal things, which 
had shut out from them the light of heaven. And He 
came to show them how worthless were the things upon 
which they had fixed their attention, and to lead them to 
look inward and forward and upward. They had indeed a 
most imposing form of worship. But their eyes were daz- 
zled by the gold of the temple or covered with broad phylac- 
teries. He wished to teach them to look at the things of the 
spiritual world in their impressive simplicity. Stern and 
fearless as He was in defending the temple from the profana- 
tion of traffic. He had come to bring in the day when neither 
on Gerizim nor yet at Jerusalem should men worship the 
Father, but when the true worshipers should worship Him 
in spirit and in truth. Accordingly we find Him teaching 
indifferently in the temple, the synagogue, the mountain, 
the desert, the wayside, the house of the publican. 

He spoke the truth to high and low, to the proud and to 
the despised, without other distinction than such as was re- 
quired by the state of heart of the person addressed. 

He did not manifest that reverence for dignities which 
makes them of more value than the qualities of the soul, nor, 
on the other hand, was there any of that hostility to eminence 
as such, which is the tribute which cringing envy pays to 



176 SERMONS, 

merit, which the lost spirits render to the glorious arch- 
angels. His was the spirit, which, without fear or favor, 
spoke the truth in love. 

Such was the harmony between the grandeur of Christ's 
office as a teacher and the humility of His demeanor. It 
proved Him to be the Son of God, by manifesting that sov- 
ereign love which is the character of Deity, fixing itself upon 
that soul, which God's eye always sees as the one thing of 
value in this world. 

There is another point of view in which this course 
displays the wisdom of God. It shows that Jesus understood 
the human mind. With the powers which He continually 
manifested. He might certainly have created, in His time, a 
far greater excitement. While He was walking about among 
the villages of Galilee, not having where to lay His head, 
He might have been borne in triumph through the world. It 
would have been an easy thing for Him to overthrow 
all the systems of idolatry and false philosophy in the world, 
and make Himself to be worshipped by the whole race of 
man. But He understood the nature of man too well to 
enter upon any such career. He knew that such worship of 
Himself would be mere idol-worship still. He knew how 
prone man is to forget the soul in looking at the form. The 
religion which He wished to reveal to man was one of the 
heart, and He knew that it was of more value that it should 
be planted within one soul than borne upon the lips of mill- 
ions. He knew that the principle of true piety, if once 
planted in the earth, must, by the aid of the Spirit, prevail 
over all; but He also saw that its great adversary would ever 
be that tendency to put the worship of some outward form, 
or some outward form of worship, in the place of that holi- 
ness of heart, without which no man can see the Lord. He 
therefore appeared as a humble man, and called humble men 
for His Apostles, and sent them to preach the gospel of love to 



THE FEE AGREE TO THE POOR, 177 

every being that had a soul. He forbade them to be called 
Rabbi. He pronounced His blessing upon the poor in spirit, 
upon them that mourn, upon the meek, upon the persecuted for 
righteousness' sake; while His own life of constant, patient, 
quiet devotion to the good of man, united with such powers as 
He displayed, was to His own age, and it is to ours, a living 
illustration of the system which He taught, as well as a reflec- 
tion upon earth, of that infinite mercy of the Heavenly Father, 
Who every day ' ' causes His sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." 

If we look into the mind of Jesus, we shall find proof 
that that mind was something more than human, in the 
way in which the great doctrine of the equality of mankind 
lay in it. The idea that no man has a right to lord it over 
his fellow man, is one of fearful energy. This was the soul 
of the steadfast movement that made our nation free. This, 
abiding and growing for centuries in the English mind, has 
made that nation what it is. And this, gaining possession of 
the French people, where the equally mighty conservative in- 
fluence of an enlightened fear of God was wanting, showed 
suddenly to the world that terrible but sublime Revolution. 
But in the precepts and the life of Jesus of Nazareth this doc- 
trine shines with a clear, fair, healthful, constant light and glow. 
He saw it and felt it fully. It was an essential part of that 
great system of things which He had come to reveal. Yet 
that truth, whose partial apprehension has made the wisest 
men of the wisest times madmen, dwelt here in all its breadth 
and strength and fulness, in the mind of a Jew, — one of a 
nation who were in bondage to a distant and a hated people, — 
a nation famed from of old for their impatience of a foreign 
yoke; a nation whose ancestral recollections were as glori- 
ous as their present bondage was degrading. And, moreover, 
these glorious memories were connected with the very family 
of Jesus. Himself was the Individual to whom the nation 



178 8EBM0N8. 

would look to deliver it from slavery; and, as we have seen, 
in His own hand were powers which might easily have bidden 
defiance to the Caesars. Would any man in such circum- 
stances have led the life that Jesus did? Can the facts in the 
case ever be accounted for upon the supposition that Jesus 
was a man? But suppose Him to be what He claimed to be, 
and the difficulty disappears. The ability to hold fully a 
truth at once so great and so novel, and yet preserve the bal- 
ance of the mind, bespeaks a mind more than human. And 
we should infer the same from the aspect which the doctrine 
assumed in His mind. It has that calmness, and clearness, 
and scope, and universal adaptation which mark Divine things. 
There is none of that spasmodic action which attends the 
movements of a human mind under the influence of a great 
idea. He saw, of course, the obvious bearing of the princi- 
ple upon the political condition of His country, and upon the 
subject of political government in general. But He saw, too, 
that this was only one of the incidental results of the funda- 
mental principles which He had come to destroy or to estab- 
lish, and He spent His life in impressing, in its simple 
purity, that foundation principle of the immediate responsi- 
bility of each individual soul to God, which, when once fairly 
mastered, would, in the process of ages, apply itself to all 
the relations of life in future generations, as it did every day 
in His own life. And He showed the far vision as well as the 
wide scope of the Divine eye, in thus, without agitation or 
bewilderment, striking at the root from which grew the evils 
which existed in society, and in thus quietly preparing the 
ground and planting the seed of the tree of life, whose leaves 
should be for the healing of nations, instead of thrusting 
into the hard ground detached branches laden with some one 
of the twelve manner of fruit which the tree should bear. 
Now that time has revealed it, we can see the perfect wisdom 
of such a course, but it was a Divine Mind that could lay the 
plan! 



TRE PBEACHER TO TEE FOOM. 179 

So the disciples of John go back to their Master, and 
what should they say of Christ? 

They saw Him in fashion as a man, and yet they saw Him 
do the works of God. He spake so gently, and yet He 
spake as ''never man spake." He did not assume the 
majesty even of Scribe or Centurion, but what command was 
in Him! And, with all His power, He lived to preach the 
gospel to the poor. What should they say of that? Surely 
this is not human, and yet, how humane it is! Certainly, we 
say, this is not humanity, and then the very echo of our 
words corrects the thought of our minds and of our hearts. 
Verily this, and only this, is humanity, — humanity purified 
from selfishness. A human spirit in full sympathy and vital 
union with all mankind, — the ''Son of Man." And yet His 
works and His word, and the whole manifestation of Him, 
proclaim Him Son of God. So He is the God-Man, come 
from the "Bosom of the Father " into the heart of human- 
ity, that he may enable them that will "believe into him" 
to become Sons of God, and may take them home again 
with Him to the blessedness from which He came. So let 
us, "poor in spirit," receive His gospel. " Blessed ye poor, 
for yours is the kingdom of God. " 

How precious a legacy to the church and to the world is the 
history of Christ's life. 

It is amazing to see what an inconsistency exists between 
the professed principles and the life of almost every man. 
This Jesus was the one Man whose life was in perfect har- 
mony with His own precepts. In Him every act is in natural 
accord with every doctrine. To this His followers look, in 
every age, for an example of a true life and for the principles 
which are to guide them in every situation. The beauty of 
that life, shining there in the view of all coming genera- 
tions, while it has awakened the rapture of infidel as well as 
Christian, has ever pointed steadfastly up the way that lead- 
eth unto life, and it is a light that can never be hid. 



II. 
THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD. 



The Great Mercy of God. 

Psalm ciii: 11. 

For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward 
them that fear Him. 

The Psalms, like all the poetry of the Old Testament, are 
full of the impression of the awful greatness of the created 
universe in which this world is set. It is an impression com- 
mon to all great and thoughtful minds, and the greatest 
minds stagger most under it, because they are able to feel 
more its unspeakable immensity; but yet, human as they are, 
they can no more grasp and sustain such a thought than the 
feeblest of intellects. In such an overwhelming contempla- 
tion mere man can be only passive, great to suffer but never 
to bear up under the burden. So we discern the approach to 
the presence of purely divine power. The mightiest human 
intellects show more and more tokens of might as we see them 
in contrast with other human intellects and their works. But 
as those same chief human minds come into the presence of 
divine power, they become a spectacle no more of strength 
but of feebleness, and all their development of intellect 
only adds emphasis to that expression of impuissance. They 
express feebleness as smaller minds cannot, by virtue of 
their very greatness and through the dread relief in which 
they stand in consequence of their separation from the 
ordinary ranks of mind. 

Thus Daniel Webster, as death drew near to him, wrote 
these words for his epitaph: 

'<Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief ! Philosophi- 
cal argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the 

183 



184 SERMONS. 

universe, in comparison with the insignificance of this globe, 
has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith which is in me; 
but my heart has always assured and re-assured me, that the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. The Sermon 
on the Mount cannot be a mere human production. This belief 
enters into the very depth of my conscience. The whole 
history of man proves it." 

That is the natural working of a great intellect under the 
various teachings of God. " When I consider thy heavens, 
the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou 
hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him?" 

Human minds, that can only come to great things by 
leaving small things, find it a hard labor to receive the idea 
of an Intelligence which can fill and contain all this immen- 
sity, and yet whose full and sympathizing presence is with 
even such atoms as we are. And it is most natural that this 
difl5culty should be greatest with the greatest minds, because 
they have most experience of the littleness of common things 
as seen in the perspective of greatness. And so it is most 
philosophical that praise should be perfected out of the 
mouth of babes, that those minds which have not been over- 
whelmed by the effort to comprehend a greatness more than 
they could bear, should most freely give glory to the God 
whose blessing and whose presence it requires only a pure 
heart and a single eye to see and to feel; just as it is not the 
eye that is dazzled by the noonday sun but that which is 
gladdened by its morning beam, that rejoices most truly and 
intelligently, as well as most freely, in its shining. But the 
heart of man is not liable, like his mind, to lose its elasticity 
as it grows great, and so the great statesman's heart answered 
as simply as a child to the voice of the Son of God speaking 
upon the Mount. For the heart is ever young, it does not 
grow stiff and weary and unwieldy like the body or the mind. 
Its emotion, if it move at all, is always free and unlabored 



THE GEE AT MEBCY OF GOD, 185 

like a child's, and its perceptions are just so spontaneous, if 
the mind will heed them. 

From a Webster, with his sometimes wavering mind made 
steadfast by the assurance and re-assurance of his heart, we 
turn to this '^ Psalm of David." And here we see a noble 
sight and hear a noble voice; the full and concordant ' ' Amen " 
of a great mind to the teaching of a great heart enlarged by 
God. That overpowering vastness of the universe becomes 
to him the dwelling — the not too spacious habitation — for the 
great love of God which is speaking to his heart. 

He says: ''As the heaven is high above the earth, so 
great is His mercy toward them that fear Him." 

It is the awe of a soul standing upon this earth and be- 
neath the infinite heaven that is lifted over it, and looking 
up into its immensity; and as it looks, it fears, and is hushed 
in awe; and, as it stands thus still and fearful, it feels 
the Divine presence filling that space, and it feels the 
Divine breath upon the heart, and it is a warm breath of 
kindness, and the assurance springs up, that God's love fills 
all that expanse, yea, that this sky, and that deep heaven and 
heaven of heavens are a pavilion of God's mercy spread over 
us, His own infinite love over-arching them that fear Him; 
and that it is all not too great for the dwelling of the love of 
God; and so the fearful awe of the mind becomes not con- 
fusion or prostration, but a most peaceful and cheerful, 
though most solemn, psalm of praise. 

For these grand objects of contemplation were not un- 
familiar to David. His childhood was that of a shepherd- 
boy at Bethlehem of Judea, and, as he kept his flocks by 
night, the stars were his companions. As he looked up among 
them night by night we may well believe that he came to love 
them even more than he wondered at them, and that he won- 
dered with the rapture of a Hebrew poet, shut up as he was 
to solitary thought, and to conversation only with the most in- 



186 SERMONS. 

spiring natural objects, and with the sheep of his pasture and 
his harp. So to him the heavens declared the glory of 
God, with no speech nor language, with a voice not heard, and 
yet as with words going forth to the end of the world, and 
mingling themselves with all his soul. 

The vastness of the universe in comparison with the in- 
significance of this globe did not shake his faith; but the 
' ' multitude of the heavenly host " sang to him, as to those 
other night-watching shepherds of Bethlehem, one thousand 
years after Him, not only, '' Glory to God in the highest,'* 
but '^ on earth peace, good will toward men." 

So the boundless heaven was to David full of the love of 
God, and he needed, as we need, some such association as its 
vastness and its loftiness, in order to express the idea of the 
height and breadth and depth and length of that love which 
he felt as passing knowledge. 

So David, as he looked up to the heavens, did not feel their 
vastness oppressing his soul with skepticism, but to him 
* ' the heavens declared the glory of God. " There was no speech 
nor language, their voice was not heard, yet his soul felt a 
music in that heavenly host; ^' their line," as it were a harp 
string, a chord, a strain of music, going forth through all the 
earth, and all his soul trembled with the vibrations of that 
harp, and felt that it was in communion with God. 

And not David alone. After David's harp was joined 
to that harmony on high, Isaiah stood and looked up to the 
heavens, and did the sight crush Isaiah's faith? He says: 
(Isa. xl: 26, 27,) ''Lift up your eyes on high, and behold 
who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by 
number; He calleththem all by names by the greatness of His 
might, for that He is strong in power; not one faileth." So 
he is impressed by the vastness of the view. Does it make 
him doubt the care of God for man? He goes on to say, 
"Why sayestthou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way 



TEE GREAT MERCY OF GOD. 18T 

is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over 
from my God?" The grandeur of the firmament is to him 
an assurance of his faith. 

But perhaps those old Hebrew poets were carried away 
by the enthusiasm of a poetic soul not instructed by the 
light of modern science. Perhaps they thought that this 
earth was the center of the universe, and that all the sky was 
made for its embellishment, and if they had known what the 
telescope reveals to us, that this earth is but a poor, insig- 
nificant, opaque planet, while those stars are mighty orbs, 
blazing suns of light, they would have been perhaps sadder 
but wiser men, convinced that the great God that made 
those heavens could have no time or thought for such poor 
creatures as we are. 

If that be so, if this be the fruit of all our science, if the 
telescope has removed heaven further off from earth than 
when the world was young, we must accept the result, and 
eat the bitter fruit of our tree of knowledge, though it be a 
tree of death; we must say, ^' Peace! fond heart, there is no 
yea and amen for thy hopes, no communion with God, no 
immortality for thee." Why not? Why not? sighs through 
the soul. ' ' Because this earth on which thou dwellest is so 
little and the universe is so great." Oh! cries the soul as it 
sinks, Oh! that there were a God, that could see even me ! 

Is it so? Has science brought any such fatal present to 
man? No! Not so! When she brought the telescope to 
show the vastness of the heaven, which is God's throne, 
she brought also the microscope, to tell us that God is not 
more manifest in the vastness of the heavens than in the per- 
f ectness of each atom which goes to make up the whole. In- 
deed, we may imagine that we see some grossness in the 
great aggregations of matter, but our closest analysis leads 
to the conviction that its ultimate forms, too minute for our 
discernment, are perfectly finished. We may truly say that 



183 SERMONS, 

the telescope has not added so much of oppression to our 
view of the vastness of the universe as the microscope has 
added of assurance to that expostulation of the Saviour, ''If 
God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to- 
morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe 
you, O ye of little faith?" 

Practically, it is not so much a mistake after all, that first 
impression of every man, that the spot on which he stands is 
the summit of the earth and the center of the sky. It is so 
for him. Physically, every particle of matter is a center, 
from which and to which influences go and return in straight 
lines, connecting it with all other matter. Spiritually, every 
living soul is a center of spiritual influences radiating and 
returning, a center of the working of God, who worketh all 
and in all. Each one serves all and is served of all. 

If we can purify our idea of God, we shall no more be 
staggered at the thought that the Son of God should die for 
such a little world as this; but we shall feel that if there 
were in the universe but one fallen soul that could be saved, 
and if that soul were the feeblest tenant of the smallest as- 
teroid that God had made, yet it would be worthy of God to 
give His Son to die for that soul, and the Son would hold a 
new claim to the adoration of the angels by reason of that 
sacrifice. 

So that very infinity of God, which fills all the universe, 
assures us that our way is not hid from the Lord who hath 
<jreated these things. 

The thought presented for our contemplation then is, 

THE SUBLIMITY AND GRANDEUR OF GOD's LOVE. 

* ' As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His 
mercy toward them that fear Him." 

We stand here upon the earth and look up into space. It is 
a sight imposing and magnificent at the first, but as we look 



THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD. 18^ 

it grows upon us. There are planets so many times 
larger than this earth, which are but points of light in 
the sky; and beyond them other planets which are hardly 
less, which our eyes cannot discern; and they are close upon us 
compared with those fixed stars, and other stars beyond 
them; and so it goes on. It passes all our thought, we cannot 
measure it; yet the imagination, made to seek God's throne, 
though weary and bewildered cannot rest, but goes on, star 
beyond star, star beyond star, until it comes to the limits of 
the creation, to the infinite outer desert of blank space, and 
all that domain, set with suns, and all that void space, if 
such void there be, is the heaven which rises above the earth. 
And as high as that heaven, *' So great is His mercy toward 
them that fear Him." 

We, the dwellers upon this footstool of God, look up into 
the heavens, and an awe comes over us, and if it be a holy 
fear, then straightway, all that expanse, even to its utmost 
height, is full of the love of God, centering upon each 
one that stands, fearing God, beneath that awful arch. 

I. The love of God is sublime in its magnitude. It fills 
all this wide universe. It fills it with worlds, and so far as we 
are able to know, it fills those worlds with life, and fills those 
lives with blessing. *'His tender mercies are overall His 
works." 

See how great and wide is any one of His gifts. His sun,, 
which He caused to rise this morning, how great a blessing it 
was to you as an individual ! It brought you light to rejoice 
your heart, to guide your way, to reveal to you all His won- 
derful works, and to show you the face of man. It brought 
to you warmth, dispelling the cold, and with that light and 
warmth it brings newly every morning and every springtime 
the assurance of seedtime and harvest, unfailing through 
God's covenant. These blessings are manifold life and joy 
to you, but not more to you than to hundreds of millions 



190 SERMONS. 

more of men upon this earth, and to the beasts of the field, 
and to the birds of the air; and even all inanimate nature 
seems to rejoice in the sun. And then, there is all the rest 
of the solar system, rejoicing in the same periodical return 
of day. And our day is but a little fraction of that great 
blessing of light, which, pouring forth from suns countlessly 
more than all the stars which we see, is, as we believe, bath- 
ing all the universe and every soul in it that fears God, with 
blessing as full as that which morning brings to you. And 
yet this sunlight is only one of a multitude of mercies which 
make up our being here. 

Night is a wide blessing to a weary world, and as the 
grateful shade comes over us, it is grateful, too, to think that 
we may suppose that all those stars, which it shows to us, are 
representatives of systems, the half of whose inhabitants are 
enjoying the ''sleep" which ''Hegiveth to His beloved." 
And then there is all that boimty wherewith '' He openeth 
His hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing." 
There is this free and liberal air which we breathe, and which 
sends such life through every fiber of the being of every one 
of us, and of all the living creatures which the Lord God 
created and made; and there are those bountiful and spark- 
ling waters, at which the wild asses quench their thirst, as 
well as man. There is all the bounty of fruits, and the 
beauty of flowers, and wealth of crops; and all these sentient 
beings, which the Creator has made to rejoice in all this 
bounty. 

But what shall we say of that love that gave us these 
minds that grasp the truth and love it, and placed before 
them all this world of truth, in which they might revel, 
which they may take to themselves and convert to their own 
substance, and in the strength of it go on to new and yet 
more victorious conquest upon the field of truth ? And He 
gave these minds their tastes, by which they recognize and 



THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD. 191 

enjoy beauty and harmonies, and then He has surrounded us 
with various and unspeakable loveliness and music. So it is 
now. How was it when He planted that garden Eastward in 
Eden? 

What a thing is sin! that hath marred such beauty, that 
hath broken such music, that hath changed those senses of 
unf alien humanity to 'Hhis body of death!" Yet even now 
God giveth us capacity and subjects for rapture. But the 
passive blessing of acquaintance with truth or loveliness is 
not the limit of the greatness of God's love, as shown in our 
mental constitution. He hath shown His love to us, in that 
He hath given us the power of thought. And who can meas • 
ure the greatness of such a gift? The power of thought! 
That a man, so feeble and so young, can look abroad in this 
world and off into God's universe, and can make all the crea- 
tion not only to instruct him in knowledge, but also to afford 
him the material and suggestions for reasonings, by which 
his own mind may repeat processes like those of the great 
God Himself, that we may not merely see the grandeur and 
loveliness of natural things, but may interpret their plan and 
trace out the inner harmonies of them, and that, taught by 
them in first principles of order, harmony and law, of kind- 
ness and truth, we may go on even to reasonings on unseen 
things, and talk of spirits and their faculties. 

So our minds may go on climbing the heavens — star be- 
yond star — until we may, in imagination, come to the top- 
most pinnacle, to the star which stands out beyond all the rest 
and sends its twinkling on both sides into void space. But 
even there we do not think that the mind has done its great- 
est work; for it can reason of God, and of abstract right, 
and deem that that right is the law of God's own being; and 
of free generosity and nobleness and love, which is the motive 
of God Himself. And not only that, but man may make all 
these high thoughts operative again upon his own being; 



192 SERMONS. 

and he may regulate his own acts by that law of right, and 
his emotions by that benevolence, which inspire God's own 
action. And so, doing the works of God, and thinking the 
thoughts of God, we may be formed in the image of God — 
I was about to say — may become almost as God, as ^'it is 
written, I said ye are gods." 

Do our minds recoil from the thought, as if it might be 
blasphemous? We remember that God, the Son, '*is not 
ashamed to call us brethren," and that we may be ''sons and 
daughters of the Lord Almighty," and that is the same 
thought in its greatness, though not in its dreadfulness. Oh! 
how fearful it would be to stand out independent, unsupported, 
at such a fearful height of being. If so it please the Infinite 
One, that we are to stand beside His throne, let it not be ex- 
cept as sons, that we may lean upon that throne, and feel the 
love of a Father, blessing all that strange greatness of our 
being. 

Verily, sublime in its greatness is that love which fills all 
this great universe with crowded blessings. But how ''high 
toward them that fear Him " is the love of that God who 
bends from His own heaven of heavens, and touches such a 
creature as man, and indues him with a power of thought 
which can go forth exulting to the bounds of His own uni- 
verse, and has given him a soul, eternal as the Deity Himself, 
and destined to rise and stand beside His very throne, and to 
be His own companion forever. Is not that love high above 
the earth as the heavens to which those thoughts ascend, yea, 
high as the very heaven of heavens to which the soul itself 
is to rise? 

II. The love of God is sublime in its magnanimity. 

Here is a higher style of greatness. We honor greatness of 
power and affluence of bounty. But w^e recognize a great 
and noble heart most by its superiority to caprices, and irri- 
tations, and prejudices, and narrow ends; by the power of 



THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD. 193 

maintaining an independent generosity of heart under provo- 
cations and irritations. It is noble to be first in bounty to 
those who may not have done kindness to us ; it is magnanim- 
ous to forgive. '^ He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he 
that taketh a city." All the world would say that as the 
Bible says it. 

God, then, displays the magnanimity of His mercy in that 
He is '^ good even to the evil and the unthankful," in that 
He ^^sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." It is 
not so with men. If we do any man a favor and he does not 
thank us, our impulse is to do no more for him. Indeed, it were 
well if we were always ready to return even the favors which 
we do receive. Oh, what a stain to a nature is this ingrati- 
tude! Here appears the great disparity of being. Man 
stands, as it were, upon a little projecting shelf, beneath a 
measureless height, above a bottomless gulf. The height is 
the generosity of God. The depth is the ingratitude of 
fiends; and we here waver to the one and to the other, and 
with the one or with the other shall be our portion forever 
more. Our Father bends to draw us to Himself, and our 
passions continually strive to thrust us down. Where and 
what should we be if, as we turned away and insulted God, 
He were also to leave us? But He '^ is God and not man," 
and so He bears Vv^th us, and so His goodness follows us, 
morning and evening and on every side, with its gentle per- 
suasion, if we will yet return and love Him. The Father 
surrounds us with His mercy; the Son came and died for us; 
the Spirit comes to dwell with us; and we spend the Father's 
bounty upon our lusts ; we trample upon the blood of the 
Son; we close the door upon the Spirit; and yet God bears 
with us and fills our cup with blessings; the Son appeals to 
us still by His blood, and the Spirit knocks at the door. Is 
not that sublime magnanimity? 

III. But this same love of God is also sublime in 



194 8EBM0NS. 

the freeness of its bounty. We have our es-timates and 
measures of finite things, as we exchange with one another 
the gifts which God has given us ; and we go on adding to the 
price, according to the increasing value of our commodities. 
But soon we come to our limit; we come to goods which 
transcend all our valuation; we come into the presence of 
Him from whom, as children, we receive all our possessions, 
and all that with which we buy them, to our Father; and there 
we are, destitute before Him; and He possesses all things. We 
have nothing to pay, and He gives without price the priceless 
gift. There is the mark of the sublime bounty of God Him- 
self; as Omnipotence is still in its action, as Omniscience is 
calm in its thinking, so Infinite bounty is free in its be- 
stowing. 

IV. Moreover, God's [mercy is sublime in its ten- 
derness. 

<' Like as a father ^pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth 
them that fear Him; for He knoweth our frame; He remem- 
bereth that we are dust." It is a sympathy filling the 
universe; not standing aloof by itself, like a finite thing, 
and sending blessings to us, but like an all-pervading Pres- 
ence, as it is, filling all our being, and pouring through 
it all a sense of a tender love, which, when we have felt it in 
ourselves, we may read in all about us, and so rejoice as we 
view the tenderness of that mercy which '^is over all His 
works." In this very fact of tenderness, that love which be- 
fore appeared so great in extent, becomes great in character; 
for tenderness is the perfectness of all kindness and even of 
all politeness. 

V. But there is another view of this great mercy of God. 
It is a fact full of great awe, and of critical fear. 

Every approach of God to man is full of awe. And here, 
in His mercy. He comes nearest to us. In the intercourse of 
men with men, nothing stirs a deeper or a juster indignation 



THE GEE AT ME ROT OF GOD, 195 

than benefits scorned; and Jehovah our God is a jealous God. 
The just God, giving the law on Sinai, is terrible, but there 
is a solemnity also in the still voice of the Gospel. For what 
saith the Scripture? '^ Therefore," it saith, ^'because ye 
are not come unto the mount that burned with fire, but unto 
Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to a blood speak- 
ing better things than Abel, see that ye refuse not Him 
that speaketh, for if they escaped not who refused Him that 
spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn 
away from Him that speaketh from heaven. Wherefore, let 
us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with 
reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire." 

So we should stand in awe, most of all, beneath this mercy 
of God, which stands high as heaven over us. And so the 
Psalmist says, in another place : ^' With Thee is forgiveness 
that Thou mayest be feared." And, as we look, so it is in 
our text: '< As the heaven is high above the earth, so great 
is His mercy toward them that fear|Him." To them that 
fear Him not under this sublimity of His goodness, all this 
heaven is no longer full of pure mercy. The wrath of God 
is gathering in it, as a storm gathers in a summer's day, and 
it will come with clouds, covering but not filling that deep 
heaven of love; but though the hand of wrath should rest over 
the wondering despisers, yet all the time the vast universe 
beyond those clouds will be basking serenely in the light 
of God's love; and only they who dwell under and look up 
into the infinite openness of that heaven of love, can really 
see the awful greatness of the Infinite God, and not they 
who shrink in terror under these clouds of wrath which rest 
so close upon the earth. Therefore it is for them, to whom 
this awful greatness of God is revealed, to know His terrors, 
and knowing them, to persuade men. For ' ' according to Thy 
fear," according to the awe which His greatness inspires, ^'so 
is Thy wrath." So we must measure the greatness of God's 



196 8EBM0N8. 

Being by the greatness of His love, and then imagine all that 
great Being revealing Himself in wrath to the uttermost* 
What shall that mean? We should '^ perish from the way, 
when His wrath is kindled but a little." Do we shudder at 
this perdition? We choose it if we reject God's love; God 
cannot save us in our sins. He sends His son to save us 
from our sins. 

There is the great example of God's love, in the light 
of which all the rest are lost like stars at sunrise. 

< * God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we 
were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Here is ''the breadth 
and length and depth and height, the love which passeth 
knowledge." Its depth, it reaches to our low estate of sin; 
its height, it lifts us to the throne of God; its breadth, ''far 
as the east is from the west," from one to the other border of 
space, " so far hath He removed om' transgressions from us." 
It fills the breadth of our being, the breadth of His domin- 
ion; and then, its length — "His mercy is from everlasting 
to everlasting toward them that fear Him;" it goes on with 
them through eternity. 

Such is the mercy of our God; behind and before, above 
and beneath, it surrounds and overwhelms us. He invites — 
it is a blessed invitation, the invitation of God. He entreats — 
it is a fearful entreaty, the entreaty of God. Standing be- 
neath this great love of God, what answer shall we return to 
it ? Here, Lord, are our little hearts — oh, take them and fill 
them with Thy love. 



III. 
THE PERFECT MAN, 



The Perfect Man. 

Ephesians iv: 13. 

Till ^ve all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the 
Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the ful- 
ness of Christ. 

Man's most ambitious study is himself. He delights in 
the maxim that '' The noblest study of mankind is man," as 
if he did not know that the noblest and the truest study of 
mankind is God. Ever since the Tempter said, ^ ^ Ye shall 
be as gods," man has made himself the competitor of God 
for the central throne in all his thoughts ; and so he sends his 
thoughts roaming over the earth and among the stars, and 
they come back and report that they have found nothing so 
noble as the living soul from which they sprung, and so 
they chant together, '^O, man, man, how excellent is thy 
name in all the earth! " But the wisdom that is from above, 
seeing man's feebleness thus exalted, cries out, " O Lord, our 
Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! Out of 
the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained 
strength." 

Proud man, retiring thus into the study of his own roy- 
alty, has rejoiced in fashioning unto himself ideas of man- 
hood, searching, like Diogenes, through all his own dark 
and crooked thoughts, as well as through all outward life, 
that he may find a man; and in general, the more he has 
sought, the more those lineaments of justice, and truth, and 
generosity, which he had looked for, have faded away and 
left a falsehood and a mockery. But still, after the various 
heroes Avhich man has set up have proved to be mere '' kings 
of shreds and patches," the mind clings to its persuasion 

199 



200 8EIiM0NS, 

that the idea of the hero soul is not a fiction — that it is possi- 
ble for a man, out of the independent nobleness of his own 
soul, to live a life truly just and generous, truly great and 
good. It is a mistake. There is no such hero, in fact or in 
possibility; man cannot have an independent greatness, and 
the hero is a mere fiction, if we consider him as one out 
of whose own greatness of soul great results spring forth. 
There lurks at the core of all our human conceptions of man- 
hood that worm, self, which by seizing to itself the vitality 
which God had given, blights the fruit bearing of the soul. 
It is at the heart of our hero, as well as of the miser; and 
so the searching examination for real wealth of soul finds in 
the treasury of the one, as of the other, nothing but with- 
ered leaves; and so we find that in this world nothing is great 
of or for itself, but all is part of a whole, and is great chiefly 
in some greatness of ministry as part of the whole. So it is 
with the smallest thing that is; for the grain of sand is a 
distinct and perfect creature of God, doing His will in its 
own office, and thus it is the peer of the planet. So it is 
with the greatest of creatures; for Gabriel rejoices to 
be a messenger of God to the humblest heir of salvation. 
We cannot find the real, living nobleness of man by any 
introversion, or by dissection of his nature. You may dis- 
sect an eye, and you will wonder at the curious and fanciful 
mechanism of it, and you may fill a volume with plates and 
letter-press describing the phenomenon, and when your work 
has set forth the whole, even to the utmost minuteness of 
chemical analysis, have you told what the eye is? Has all 
your science defined that little word? You have described a 
most curious and fantastical arrangement, and left, after all, 
the impression of some Chinese toy, without any meaning, 
and remarkable, at first, only for the idle painstaking of him 
who made it, and now remarkable, again, for the idle indus- 
try with which you have retraced his work. After all your 



THE PEBFECT MAM, 201 

description, what is an eye? What does it mean? The 
eye is made to see light, and all the rest has a meaning only 
as it stands in relation to that purpose. 

So, when we ask, ''What is a man?" we must know first 
what is the end and purpose, that is, the meaning of his 
being. The answer to this inquiry, an answer which arose 
in the thought even of ancient philosophers, must be that 
man, in the true intent of his being, is a lover of God — that 
as the eye was placed in the body that it might receive the 
light, so in this lower world was placed man, in order that 
the love of the Father might be discerned by an intelligent 
soul which could return love for love. Man is the organ 
in this world for recognizing the love of God, and he is the 
psalmist, to express in articulate thought and word the praise 
of God, and he is the living soul to learn the love of God, 
and to receive it as the light and the law of his own life. 

A true view of man, then, must consider him in his 
adaptation to the end of his being — as a lover of God. We 
are to study him, not as standing apart, an independent be- 
ing, but as a being on every side defined by God. In God 
he lives and moves and has his being, and therefore his being- 
is defined when we have told his relations to God, and his be- 
ing is noble and true, or false and ignoble, accordingly as he 
is or is not in true union with God. 

Our subject, then, is ''The complete man," the law, the 
nurture, the exercise, and the end of his being. 

The law we have from the lips of Him who made man: 

' ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." 

The complete man is a thoroughly pious man. He loves 
God with all his heart. 

The sources of the character are in those deep emotions 
and affections of the soul which human laws do not even try 



202 SERMONS. 

to reach; in those secret springs of action which are, like the 
fountain head of a river, hidden in inaccessible recesses of 
mountains ; or shall we rather say, like those ' ' waters above the 
firmament," those vapors dissolved in air, which float in God's 
light, mingling undistinguishably with that serenity, until 
God's law shall bid them gather into clouds to make the 
morning and evening glorious, or to descend in raindrops, 
millions upon millions of witnesses to every man that God is 
good. Even thus it is with the pious heart. Its emotion, 
before it is formed into volition or begets thought or action, 
is a love to God, rising silent and unseen, and mingling and 
losing itself in God's love to it, which called it forth, a& 
the vapor of noonday fills all the air and sky in particles lost 
in the warm brightness of the sunlight; and again, when 
occasion calls, in this peaceful sea of love gather emotions 
of love, which answer the particular expression of God's 
love, as the moisture of the sky gathers itself into clouds, 
that they may shine in the benignity of the sunset; and still 
again, when the time calls for good deeds, they, too, come 
forth from the treasures of the heart's love, like the rain 
and dew from heaven, and they make the love of God to 
shine among men, as the raindrops form the sunbeams inta 
the bow of promise. 

Here, then, in this undivided love of the heart for God, is the 
spring of the character of the man of God, and from it flows a 
character diverse in all its principles from that of the hero of 
this world. For his self-sufficiency it has poverty of spirit, 
because it has nothing and is in the presence of God who 
possesseth all things; for his complacency, it has mourning for 
sin; for his vaunting, it has meekness; for his self-satisfaction 
it has hungering and thirsting after righteousness; for his 
arrogance it has mercy, remembering that it needs mercy; in 
its purity of heart it sees God; and, loving peace, it is called 
the child of God. 



THE PERFECT MAN. 20a 

All the heart ! Not in some ranges of affection and emotion 
but in all, the perfect man loves God. He does not repress 
any pure and true emotion of his nature; for if he did, he 
would not be loving with all the heart; but the emotional 
nature is cultivated and developed in a genial and kind 
sympathy with the joys and the sorrows, the enthusiasms and 
the repentings of humanity. He is to be a whole-hearted man 
among men; a man that knows how to be heartily glad, though 
his laughter is never 'Hhe laughter of the fool;" a man who- 
can come and sit by you in your affliction and you shall feel 
that his sympathy is no set form of words, and yet sorrowing 
not as they that have no hope, for his sorrow is ' ^ after a godly 
sort," and he '^rejoiceth in the Lord always." He shuns not 
those domestic affections which bless the life of this world, for 
he feels the love of God in them all. For they all work 
together to train the soul to the love of God: it was even ar 
Divine voice which said, ' 'Whosoever shall do the will of my 
father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister 
and mother." 

So that the man of God may be perfect in heart, let him be 
full of love — loving not only the abstract idea of God 
whom he hath not seen, but all the children and the works of 
God. Let his whole heart be in free and healthful exercise 
and play. Thus let him become even as a little child, with all 
his emotions springing to praise the Father. So shall he show 
forth the character of the Lord's free man. 

The heart which has communed with the -heart of Christ 
turns to other human hearts with a love which it has learned 
of Him who died for us. The disciple whom Jesus loved 
saith, ''He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 
how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?" 

No ! The man of God is not narrowed in the range or in 
the greatness of his pure human sympathy. For as all the 
love which flows into his heart from all earthly friends is but 



204 SERMONS. 

a flowing, in many streams, of that great love of God which 
is ever pressing to find an entrance into his soul, so all his 
love, if it be the pure love of a true heart, toward whatsoever 
object it may immediately go forth, is still a part of his own 
love which goes back, seeking God again through these same 
channels by which the love of God flows first unto us. '^ I will 
run," saith the Psalmist, ''I will run in the way of thy 
commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart." So let 
the man of God learn largeness of heart by all those teachings 
of which God has made up the intercourse of life, that the 
experience of every hour may bring his heart more into the 
likeness of God, who doeth good to all, whose tender mercies 
are over all His works. Such an heart was that of Moses, 
' ' the man of God. " But such beyond all human comparison 
was the Prophet of our brethren like unto Moses, that Divine 
heart, whose great and pure love so sought out and embraced 
humanity that He is called '' the Son of Man." So great- 
hearted and so true-hearted should be he that loves God with 
all his heart, '' that the man of God may be perfect." 

Again, the perfect man must love God '^with all his 
soul." 

He must be an earnest man. His love is not merely to be 
a general state of complacence, floating in emotions or settling 
in reveries, but it must form itself into acts of soul, into 
purposes and principles and strivings. The heart, in its own 
secret piety sits with God, '' to hear what God the Lord will 
speak," and ^^He will speak peace unto his people," and that 
sitting before God with all the soul rapt in His blessed words 
of peace is the attitude of the heart in the exercise of pious 
emotion. But out of that heart flow all issues of life. The 
heart that loves God perfectly, is kept in perfect peace, it hath 
entered into God's rest, but that rest is not a motionless 
quiescence, for God is not quiescent and he that loveth is born 
of God, and the Father worketh hitherto, and so must the 



THE PERFECT MAN. 205 

soul, whose life is hid in God, be ever working the works of 
God. Its peace and rest is nothing other than a perpetual 
spontaneous flow and gush of most blessed activity. God 
saith, ''Seek ye My face" and the heart saith unto him 
< ' Thy face, O Lord, will I seek. " ' ' Lo I come ! in the volume 
of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O 
My God " — '' yea, Thy law is within my heart." There is the 
secret spring of the activity of '' the man of God." God's 
law is within the heart and so that same law which governs 
the great and manifold activity of God, is perpetually 
developing various and earnest activites of soul. Therefore, 
this loving God with all the soul implies, not merely that the 
man of God be free from purposes opposed to the will of God, 
but that all his soul be alive with purposes, volitions, and acts, 
all joyfully and harmoniously working out the will of God. 
Like some great manufactory, in which are a thousand men 
each intent upon his several department, but all working 
together to produce the perfect fabric in which no part shall 
be lacking, so all the manifold emotions of the heart are 
working out manifold desires and purposes and acts of good 
will, each in its own particular direction and with its own 
immediate object, but all working together to make up that 
perfect sum of good willings, which is, for that soul, its perfect 
loving of God, and which answers in its lower sphere to that 
perfect love of God for the soul which so directs all things that 
they work together for good to them that love God. 

So at once by the purity and by the fulness and earnestness 
of the vitality of the soul, let him that nameth the name of 
Christ learn to love God with all the soul, that in the acts 
of the soul the man of God may be perfect. 

Moreover, the complete man must love God with all his 
mind. God has given him an intellect, and it is his duty to 
be a sound and Christian scholar and thinker. 

Some men, perverting the meaning of those words, '*I 



^06 SERMONS. 

determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ 
and Him crucified," have despised the exercise of the intel- 
lect. Not so does the Word of God, for Paul in that same 
passage says, '^ Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that 
are perfect." And the Hebrews are exhorted to leave the 
principles of the doctrine of Christ, and to go on unto per- 
fection, searching into the ''deep things of God," as the only 
exercise by which a Christian mind can preserve its health, 
and so prominent among the ''things that accompany sal- 
vation. " Not such is the testimony of the works of God. 
For God has made all this world full of hidden wisdom, 
crowding all the objects of all His universe with testimonies of 
His power, of His wisdom and of His love, and then putting 
us among them with these minds, which recognize His chal- 
lenge and spring to the search into these hidden mines of 
truth, and from this search the mind grows keen and strong 
and ardent, and able to discern good and evil, and all these 
works of God, rightly studied, lead the mind to God; yes, 
and may we say, into God. In all its searching the mind 
walks in the midst of God's wisdom, power and love. The 
mind feels, in its best activity, that it is working, not with 
and in dumb materials, but in the midst of eternal thoughts; 
that itself is continually in the midst of an infinite mind, 
whose thought is everlastingly active all round about it and 
throughout it — which is the atmosphere in which the mind 
lives and thinks. So it is ever joyfully thinking with God 
the thoughts of God. Shall the life which is hid with Christ 
in God lie passive and listless in the bosom of that infinite 
and ever active Intelligence? Shall it not rather apply itself 
to all the wisdom by which God summons it to action, and 
thus love God with all the mind, and thus be "renewed in 
knowledge after the image of the Creator." For God smiles 
upon man's search for wisdom, giving to all liberally and 
upbraiding not, giving even His own spirit to lead our minds 



THE PERFECT MAN. 207 

<'into all truth." Let the man of God, then, diligently apply 
the faculties of a mind, purified and enlightened by the spirit 
of God, to the study of the truth of God, and to thinking 
the thoughts of God, that his constantly expanding mind 
may be continually coming more and more to know God and 
Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, whom to know is life ever- 
lasting. So shall he love God with all the mind, that in 
mind also the man of God may be perfect. 

Still, again, the man of God should ''love God with all 
his strength." It is his duty to the extent of his ability to 
be a strong man, strong not with the vain strength of man 
that would be a hero, but '' strong in the Lord and in the 
power of His might." 

This is a strength which flows directly, like the right will 
and the clear, sound mind, out of the pure fountain of a 
pious heart. For the true heart has as its ally the everlasting 
strength of the Lord Jehovah. And the very natural effect 
of sincere piety is to bring strength out of weakness — the 
strength of an honest man, the strength of an earnest man, 
the strength of a man who believes that there is a God and 
that God " is with the truth." With all that strength is the 
man clothed who has learned to put off all the craft of human 
sophistry and vain wisdom, and simply as a child to seek the 
pure truth of God, and honestly and artlessly to tell it and 
to do it. So out of the mouth of babes doth God ordain 
strength. The philosopher and the scribe are amazed at the 
strong truthfulness of the child, the monarch quails before 
the martyr, the Roman centurion goes from the crucifixion 
exclaiming, ''certainly this was a Son of God." 

So strong is every simply true man. And if round about 
this strength of inner truth he has put on the whole ' ' armor 
of light" is he not strong? It is the duty of the man of 
God to be strong in the faithful development and exercise of 
every faculty of body, mind and soul, strong in every con- 



208 SERMONS. 

nection which man may form with the strength of God; so 
by his strength shall he glorify God, <' Who ordaineth strength 
in babes because of his enemies, that He may still the enemy 
and the avenger." Let the love of God shine forth, then, in 
the strength of the man of God, that the man of God may 
be perfect. 

In our text we have the means by which man is to attain 
this perfectness, ^'till we all come in the unity of the faith 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect 
man," the one faith and knowledge of God. We are to come 
fully and trustingly to God in Christ as the way, the truth 
and the life, and so, committing our whole souls unto Him, 
continually to learn of Him, mingling our souls with the 
Son of God, and in proportion as we see Him we shall be 
like Him — learn to be Sons of God. And those emotions 
and desires which filled the heart of Christ shall fill our 
hearts, and out of that love shall spring, even as the life 
blood leaps from the heart to carry health through the sys- 
tem, such works of God as He came from heaven to do. So 
directly out of that first and great commandment shall flow 
the second, which is like unto it, '' Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." For into that same heart of Christ flow all 
the hearts that love Him, and then in that heart they are 
united in one, all their individual desires and ambitions and 
affections coming into membership of that great love of 
Christ, which desires the true good of all that love Him and 
of all whom He loves. Thus in that one heart, in proportion 
as we know Him and love Him, we are all united in one, and 
we love Him, who is the whole, with all our love, and we 
love each other as ourselves. And behold now, and not till 
now, do we come to the true meaning of that ''perfect man." 
It is not the maturity of any individual man, but rather that 
perfect whole of humanity, which is to make up the body of 
Christ, of which we all are members. No one human soul 



THE PERFECT MAN. 209 

will in any period of eternity be that perfect man, but all 
together, in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of 
the love of God, are to come unto that perfect man, unto the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. That 
glorious whole — that '^new man" — is the proper object of 
these aspirations of our nature. When He shall appear may 
we be ^* found in Him." 



IV. 

JOHN, THE LOVED DISCIPLE. 



John, the Loved Disciple. 

Jolin xiii: 23. 

Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom 
Jesus loved. 

' ' The disciple whom Jesus loved." This is an expression 
upon which the religious emotion of the church has dwelt so 
long and so delightfully that it seems almost like sacrilege 
to suggest a doubt as to the correctness of the import which 
pious hearts have been accustomed to assign to the words. 
Still, I do not know but that justice to the Evangelist may- 
require a re-examination of his meaning; and perhaps, if the 
result of such a consideration should be a modification of our 
common impression, we may find his real meaning not only 
more just to himself, but not less delightful to Christian con- 
templation. 

We have been won to understand John as customarily 
designating himself as the favorite of his Master. We can 
well believe that one whose heart was so full of love as 
his, would occupy even such a place as that in the heart of 
the Lamb of God. But can we quite suppose that such a 
heart, in the maturity of its grace, would indulge any desire 
to give public prominence to such a distinction over his 
brother apostles, who had already, when this gospel was 
written, one after another, laid down their lives for the cause 
of their common Lord? Is such an understanding in accord- 
ance with the evident modesty of intention, with which this 
form of speech seems to have been chosen? Would not the 
better view be something like this? The living fountain of 

213 



214 SUMMONS 

John's piety was always the tnought of a Divine love which 
had ''first sought" him. ''Herein," he says, "is love, not 
that we loved God, but that He loved us." During the few 
years when he was with Jesus, his life was in his Master's love, 
and during his long subsequent life, the remembrance of these 
privileges became more and more precious to him. At 
length, in his age, he sat down to write the story of his 
Master's life. With true modesty he does not often intro- 
duce himself as an actor. Not once does he tell his own 
name; but when the course of the history brings before him 
that young man, that he was sixty years before, enjoying day 
by day the unmerited love of the Son of God, he could not 
avoid designating that young disciple by the circumstance 
which was more present to his own mind when he thought of 
him, than was the name men called him by, namely, the 
fact that "Jesus loved" him, not more than He loved any 
other, but that His love should have rested, at all, upon such 
an one. 

The whole Christian character of the Apostle John is 
formed about this idea that Christ had " first loved" him, so 
that this history is the example given us in the word of God, 
to illustrate the influence of the sense of Christ's love in 
forming the Christian. 

This Apostle shared with his brother James, who was to 
be the first martyr from their band, and Simon Peter, who 
illustrates an entirely different style of personal and 
Christian character, the most intimate association with their 
Lord. 

John was, by nature, a man whose emotions, impulses and 
associations were personal and social, rather than general, 
political or abstract. In this he differed widely from Peter 
and Paul. He was not naturally a mild man, nor an ill- 
natured man, but all his personal feelings, of whatever charac- 
ter, were very strong. This view, I think, we shall find sus- 



JOHN, THE LOVED DISCIPLE. 215 

tained by his history, and be able to trace, in some degree, 
the progress and character of the sanctification of such a 
heart. 

We find him first, with his brother James, upon the shore 
of the Sea of Galilee, in a small fishing vessel, with Zeb- 
edee, their father, and hired servants, mending nets. Jesus 
passed along the shore, with Simon and Andrew, whom He 
had just called. He invited them to follow Him, aod imme- 
diately they left father and business, and followed Him. He 
gave to them the name of Boanerges, *^Sons of Thunder," 
in allusion, probably, to that natural violence of character 
which we shall find occasionally manifested in their history. 

After their calling, they were the constant companions of 
Jesus, often admitted to scenes at which other apostles were 
not present; but the principal representations of character 
occur after the commencement of the last journey from 
Csesarea Philippi to Jerusalem. On their way, they saw the 
scene of the Transfiguration; then they came to Capernaum. 
Here occurred an incident, which illustrates the electric 
nature of the ''son of thunder," both by his aptness for 
personal attachment, and his proneness to personal collisions, 
as well as the Savior's manner of instructing him. He 
came and said to his Master, ''We found one casting out 
devils in Thy name, and we forbade him, because he followed 
not with us." And Jesus said unto him, "Forbid him not; 
he that is not against us is for us." By and by " the time 
drew near that He should be received up, and He steadfastly 
set His face to go to Jerusalem." On this account He was 
refused entertainment at a Samaritan village. This incivil- 
ity to their Master exasperated the Sons of Thunder, and 
they said, "Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come 
down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?" 
But "He turned and rebuked them and said, ye know not 
what manner of spirit ye are of, for the Son of Man is not 



216 SEBMONS. 

come to destroy men's lives, but to save them; and they went 
on to another village." 

These incidents seem so inconsistent with our common 
idea of the loved disciple, that we do not readily recognize 
him in this violent young man. Yet it is he, and in his 
action are displayed the same traits of character which were 
afterward ripened into that heavenly spirit. For the founda- 
tion of his ardor was not a violent or malignant disposition, 
but an enthusiastic attachment to his Master. It was love, 
already his engrossing emotion, but as yet unenlightened in 
its views and narrow in its scope. And see how Jesus 
answered him. He is speaking to one who had been led, by 
his attachment to one being, into animosity toward another. 
And so He opened His own heart, and behold there, instead 
of such a passion, is a love which could embrace even the 
object of that animosity. Thus He summoned His disciple 
to a magnanimity of love, which was the next lesson which he 
was to learn. 

During the last journey of Jesus through the country east 
of Jordan, occurred an incident which seems to reveal another 
failing in the apostle. The sons of Zebedee and their mother, 
Salome, present a request that they might enjoy the seats at 
His right and left hand in His kingdom. Are we to infer from 
this a selfish ambition as forming a part of John's nature? 
Probably not. The movement would seem to have originated 
with Salome, and so is to be regarded as indicating the affec- 
tion of the mother rather than the selfishness of the son. 
Such personal ambition is not like John. His temper was 
always to be the true and ready supporter rather than the 
leader, whether we find him associated with Jesus or with 
Simon Peter. It is easier to suppose that his own kind 
nature yielded to the entreaties of his parent than that he for 
himself coveted the dignity. On the other hand, such a 
desire on the part of Salome is in perfect accordance with 



JOHN, THE LOVED DISCIPLE. 217 

that affectionate nature which she always displayed. She 
was one of the women who, when Jesus was in Galilee, fol- 
lowed Him and ministered unto Him, and who came with 
Him unto Jerusalem. When He was upon the cross, she, 
with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the 
Less, stood looking in sorrow upon the scene, and when the 
Sabbath was past, the same three ^' had bought sweet spices 
that they might come and anoint him, and very early in the 
morning they came to the sepulchre." Thus we see that this 
apostle's kindness of heart was not altogether original with 
him, but that he was one of those favored men who have been 
permitted to inherit the disposition and to enjoy the influence 
of a pious mother. 

From such notices as these we derive our knowledge of 
the natural character of John and observe Christ's method in 
his education. He was now approaching what were the most 
important hours in his own life, as well as in the history of 
the world. Peter and John had from the first been among 
the disciples objects of Christ's most particular care. In 
many of the most important scenes of Christ's life, either alone 
or with James, they had attended Jesus, as at the Transfig- 
uration, and at the reviving of the daughter of Jairus, and 
afterward at Gethsemane. They were to be examples of two 
different phases of the Christian character, the one of pious 
emotion, the other of devoted action. Thus far they had 
been, like the other apostles, but partially enlightened, and 
were very immature in spiritual Christianity. A new scene 
of discipline was yet to be passed by each of them, adapted 
to his peculiar cast of mind. The ardent, independent, self- 
confident spirit was to pass through a storm of temptation 
which should sweep away all his false reliance, everything 
merely human in his strength; after vaunting his own forti- 
tude he was to tell a lie and to deny his Master at the inter- 
rogatory of a maid servant; he was to repeat that treacherous 



218 SERMONS. 

lie and to accompany it by an oath ; and then to meet that 
*4ook" of the Lord. From that time Simon Peter was an 
humble Christian. 

The scene through which John passed was of a very dif- 
ferent character. He had that personal dependence upon the 
Lord which prepared him to receive at once the impress of 
His mind and heart. His character needed ripening rather 
than purging. Accordingly what does the Lord Jesus? 
When that last supper came, John is called to the place next 
his Master, to recline upon His bosom. That hour in the 
bosom of his Lord, was the era in the life of that young man. 
It was an hour of wonderful interest to all the company; for 
in it they listened to truths which that night were new 
upon the earth. But how the soul of that youngest apostle 
was drinking in the love of Jesus! The minute circum- 
stances of the night were impressed forever on his mind, 
so that when, sixty years afterward, he sat down to write 
his Gospel, the whole scene — every look, word and gesture 
returned to his view. There he was again, reclining — a 
young man loved of Jesus. Jesus rises and washes their 
feet and says, '' Ye are clean, but not all." He resumes His 
robe and His place beside the disciple, explaining the lesson 
of the washing, and the disciple felt the heaving of the 
bosom upon which he leaned as He uttered the words, '^ One 
of you shall betray me." Then came the doubting glances 
of the disciples and the gesture of Peter, by which he him- 
self, lying upon Jesus' breast, was encouraged to whisper the 
secret question, ' ' Lord, who is it ? " and the private answer 
by giving the sop to Iscariot. Then the departure of the 
traitor leaves the way open, especially the mind of that dis- 
ciple prepared for the conversation which follows ; — Christ's 
anticipation of His glory; His injunction to the disciples to 
love one another — *' as I have loved you." How that injunction 
sank in the heart which was next His own! Then came Peter's 



JOHN, THE LOVED DISCIPLE, 219 

vain profession of fidelity, and the revelation of the heavenly- 
mansions, and the questioning of Thomas and of Philip, bring- 
ing out the words, " He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
Father;" then that blessed promise of the Comforter and the 
leaving of peace with them. Here they rose from the table, 
but the heart of the disciple had already been bound to his 
Master by new tendrils, and we cannot suppose that he was 
far from His side as He proceeded to tell of the " true vine," 
which is Himself and His Father the husbandman, and *'thej^ 
the branches." Perhaps that illustration conveyed an indis- 
tinct idea to Peter; but the disciple, who had that evening- 
felt the pulsations of the heart of Christ, understood what it 
was to abide in Him, and with a still rapture of first love, he 
was beginning to feel how blessed it was. Himself abiding 
in Christ, Christ's words abode in him. The very thoughts 
and words next uttered were those with which he long after 
began His own Epistle. Says Christ, " As the Father hath 
loved Me, so have I loved you; continue ye in My love; these 
things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in 
you and that your joy might be full." John writes, '^Our fel- 
lowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 
And these things write we unto you that your joy may be 
full." How full was the joy of that disciple in that moment 
at the thought that Jesus and the Father loved even him, and 
in Their love he might ^^ abide as a branch in the vine." 

Jesus goes on to speak of His love to them and theirs to 
one another, and as He speaks all uncharitableness melts from 
the heart of the listener, and his soul comes out into the free 
and perfect light of Christian love, so that in his epistle he 
follows the words just quoted with these: ''If we walk in 
the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with 
another." 

The Master, henceforth calling them friends, went on to tell 
them that He must go, but that He would send them the Com- 



220 SEEMONS. 

forter. At this stage of the conversation, the remembrance 
of the apostle recalls vividly the perplexity and awe of the 
disciples as they whispered to one another, ''What is this 
that He saith — a little while ?'' a question which He half 
answers and half defers. 

Then, after bidding them henceforward to pray in His 
name, and assuring them of His victory over the world, He 
''lifted up his eyes to heaven," and closed the interview, 
Avhich was becoming too solemn for human conversation, 
with that prayer for them, which closed His ministry for that 
life to them as a body. 

They went over the Kedron to the garden. He took 
Peter and James and John and went on with them; then He 
left them and went on alone, and passed the agony unsup- 
ported, except by that favored angel from heaven. In the 
meantime, the three disciples, overcome by such joys and 
such sorrows as no man on earth had ever experienced, slept. 
Yfhen they woke, Jesus was by them and the band of the 
traitor was just at hand. After a brief tumult they " all for- 
sook Him and fled." Probably most of them did not see Him 
again, except by stealth, looking through the gloom of the 
night to where the glare of the torches fell uj)on the meek 
countenance, or peeping from some hiding place along the 
Via Dolorosa, or in view of Calvary, until His resurrection. 
Peter, however, followed afar ofE, and John went in with 
Jesus into the palace of the High Priest. Here we have a 
beautiful instance of that unconscious courage which love 
creates. John had probably no martial boldness in his na- 
ture which would nerve him for dangers, before which even 
ordinary men would quail. But he loved Jesus; his heart 
had grown to the heart of Jesus, and he felt irresistibly 
drawn to His side. His soul was so full of love that there 
was no room for the thought of danger. He tells the story 
without any apparent consciousness that any special nerving 



JOHN, THE LOVED DISCIPLE. 221 

of spirit was required for it. In his case it would seem that 
there was no such summoning of courage. Such cases are 
not at all unknown, in which an impulse of affection has led 
spirits of a delicate and even timid cast through scenes which 
manly courage dared not meet. It is beautiful, as showing 
how God made love to be the commanding principle of the 
human heart, and how the gentlest things in the world are 
the strongest. 

Here, then, was John, the only one of that crowd who was 
Christ's open friend, and there, too, the mingling of his heart 
with his Lord's was going on. It was good for him to be 
even there. The same spirit which brought him to that mid- 
night council of the murderers of the Prince of Life, must 
have kept him near the Savior during all the successive 
hours of that important morning; and we may suppose that, 
even among those scenes, an occasional look of gratitude 
or kindness from the Savior swelled his heart to a new 
capacity of ecstatic love. 

We come to the cross, and there, too, stands the * ' disciple 
whom He loved " with those women, whose position is an- 
other evidence of the superior strength of simple quiet affec- 
tion over even ardent attachment, which has been accustomed 
to rely upon natural fortitude. Here, with almost the last 
words of the Lord, was finished the lesson of Christian love 
which the disciple was that day to learn. ' ' He saith 
unto His mother, behold thy son. Then saith He to the 
disciple, behold thy mother." After that He said, '^I thirst." 
They gave Him vinegar. He received it and said, ' * It is fin- 
ished ! " and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. 

The ''disciple whom Jesus loved," went away leading the 
mother of Jesus, a different man from the John who went with 
Peter, twenty-four hours before, to prepare the guest chamber 
for the Passover. John was now the first mature Christian 
on this earth, the first fruit in that kingdom of heaven in 
which the least is greater than John the Baptist. 



.322 SEBM0N8, 

We have now considered the natural character of this 
apostle, and the manner of the operation of grace in his case. 
It remains to see, in part, the soul that was thus formed. 

The Sabbath passed, and with the dawn of the following 
day came Mary Magdalene to the sepulchre. It was empty! 
She ''ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple 
whom Jesus loved." What interviews those two brethren 
had had since the crucifixion! Simon Peter needed such a 
helper then, — one who had learned Christ's love so that he 
would not break the bruised reed. 

They "ran to the sepulchre." John reached it first, but 
as affection is rather swift to run than prompt to decide, he 
went not in, until his more independent companion set the ex- 
ample, — then he went in, ''and he saw and believed, for as yet 
they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from 
the dead. " He had not known clearly what Christ's glory 
was, but this he knew, that he loved Him. 

We cannot dwell here upon the remaining incidents in 
John's life recorded in the Gospels and in the Acts. Until 
they disappear from the inspired narrative, Peter and John 
remain much together; a noble union of diverse Christian 
graces, a training of each for the work they had to do. 

After these scenes, this disciple lived until he saw 
two generations more of men gathered to their fathers. 
There was a suitableness in such an ordering of events; for 
his was the style of piety adapted to be ripened in this world. 
If you would see what his piety became, read his artless 
Epistles and study the spirit of his Gospel. You will find 
there the traces of this last conversation of the Lord, not only 
in the love which filled his heart, but even in the thoughts 
which fill his mind. That night and day determined the 
course of his emotion and of his thinking for all his long life. 
He always thought of himself as a ' 'disciple whom Jesus loved, 
which also leaned upon His breast at supper." That hour, that 



JOHN, THE LOVED DISCIPLE. 223 

hour in the bosom of his Lord, it was the recollection of his 
past life; and well it might be. For was not that the most 
blessed position which has been occupied by mortal man since 
the world began? It was good that God should leave him, 
who had known such an experience, in His church on earth for 
the longest life of man. 

Through that life, he looked back to that night and for- 
ward to the day without a night when he should meet his 
Lord again. '' Beloved," saith he, **now are we the sons of 
God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we 
know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we 
shall see Him as He is." And now he is with Him, in those 
mansions of His Father's house. They drink the fruit of the 
vine, «^new in the kingdom of His Father" and the disciple 
whom Jesus loved is forever leaning upon Jesus' bosom. 



V. 

PETER, THE SMITTEN ROCK. 



Peter, the Smitten Rock. 

Luke xxii: 61. 
And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. 

On that look turned the history of a soul, and, in no small 
degree, the history of a world. A veil seems to be drawn 
back and light from tw o other worlds is let in, so that we see 
not merely a poor Galilean cringing by the fire in the court of 
the High Priest, but we see a Prince of Darkness and a Prince 
of Light, in contest for the possession of a human soul. 

That same night, the Lord had said to Peter, ''Simon, 
Simon, Satan hath desii^ed to have you that he may sift you 
(the disciples) as wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy 
faith fail not, and when thou art converted strengthen thy 
brethren." It seems to be part of the record of a scene which 
passed behind the curtain that shuts in this visible world, like 
the opening of the book of Job. More literally translated it 
reads thus: ''Simon, Simon, Satan asked (and gained) you 
(the disciples) to sift you like wheat; but I prayed respecting 
thee that thy faith may not fail." That is the ordeal which is 
now going on. The adversary is sifting the souls of them that 
are with the Son of Man in His temptations. Judas is los . 
the rest have "forsaken Him and fled," except the disciplfi 
whom Jesus loved and whom He had cherished in His bosom 
at the Supper, perhaps that He might have one friend constant 
in the fearful trial, and this Peter, whom the tempter has 
marked for his victim. For he knows men or thinks that 
he knows them. 

Peter was a hero, as the world goes. He could fight 
in the garden against any odds — against the Jewish 

227 



228 SERMONS. 

hierarchy and the Roman Empire. But here he was in the 
strange court of the High Priest's palace, weak from much 
excitement and little rest, chilled with cold and with fear, 
helpless, hopeless, with nothing to lean upon, and nothing to 
brace against, a man, mighty to do, but who had never 
learned to suffer. Spiritual capacities, which were made to 
shake the world, are disordered for the time, and show their 
power only by the agitation, with which they shake the soul 
which they tenant. It is the adversary, ^ ' sifting wheat" 
for the Lord's garner. Peter comes in at the door, and the 
maid that kept it said ''he was one of them." He sits 
by the fire, and as its glare falls upon his face, those that sit 
by recognize him as having been '' in the garden." He tries 
to hide in the shadow of the porch, but the challenge pur- 
sues him. For more than an hour it drives him hither and 
thither, breaking down his pride, crushing his heart, until 
what was there left of the strong disciple, who last night 
''was ready to go with Jesus to prison and to death?" 
What of the "rock," upon which the church was to be 
built? Nothing but this bruised reed. At last, as the poor 
crazed soul is denying, in an agony of cursing and swearing, 
"the cock crew, and the Lord turned and looked upon 
Peter." 

If we could see that look! What was in it? 

There was majesty in it. Through the rest of this story 
Christ is called Jesus, but here it is said, "the Lord turned 
and looked upon Peter." As he met that look, captain and 
chief priest and High Priest sank, and there was but one 
"Lord" there. 

There was Omniscience in that eye. Peter thought how 
the Lord said, "before the cock crow thou shalt deny Me," 
and so he learned to say, " Lord, thou knowest all things." 

There was power in that look. As he met it, the jarring 
elements of his soul felt the potency of that word which spoke 



PETER, THE SMITTEN ROCK. 229 



the world out of chaos. They came together, not as they 
had been before, but as the new heavens and the new earth 
shall rise, for the dwelling of righteousness. 

There was tenderness in that look, the double tenderness 
of grief and of pity; grief, at the sight of which Peter is as 
a bruised reed, ready to be crushed at the first token of re- 
proach; but he does not see that reproach, but the tenderness 
of a God-like pity, that would not ''break the bruised reed 
nor quench the smoking flax, till he send forth judgment unto 
victory." In the very tenderness of that compassion lay, that 
morning, and always lies, the victory of the " Son of Man." 

There was forgiveness, and courage, and hope in it. For 
Peter can remember that saying of the Lord, ' ' I have prayed 
for thee, that thy faith fail not," and his faith receives 
strength to lay hold of the promise; he feels the everlasting 
arms taking up his helpless soul, and he feels himself hence- 
forth, as he says in his epistle, ''kept by the power of God, 
through faith, unto salvation." 

Of the effect of this look, we have first, Coxteitiox: He 
< ' went out and wept bitterly. " 

The Rock was smitten and the waters gushed forth. It 
was more than a transient emotion, a nervous excitement pass- 
ing like an April shower. It was the opening of a deep foun- 
tain of tender life within the Man of Rock. Peter was, 
before, like Arabia Petrsea, like "Mount Sinai in Arabia," 
severe, craggy, desolate. Xow he is like the Temple Mount 
at Jerusalem, no less established for ever, but the soft-g:oing: 
waters of Siloah flow from it perpetually, making glad the 
city of God. Such, all down the history of salvation, is the 
manner of God's working to make the desert blossom as the 
rose. The hearts of stone are smitten, and the gushing tear 
is the token of the opening of a stream of salvation. 

Out of this contrition comes, second. Repentance. From 
that moment Simon Peter is a changed man. John was changed 



330 SEEMONS, 

by tlie melting influence of the Savior's love, as lie lay in 
His bosom at the supper. We do not know whether John 
ever felt any bitter conviction of sin. Peter was the stout 
heart, which needed to be broken. As he stood there with- 
out, bitterly weeping, what was there left of him or for him? 
Nothing now of that rocky armor in which he had trusted. 
But yet he felt in his soul a deeper and a firmer strength. 
He rests now on that prayer of the Lord. '' I have prayed 
for thee, that thy faith fail not." And there was something 
in that look of the Lord, which told him that Christ's prayer 
still clasped him, and so he is ready to throw himself with 
simple faith into those everlasting arms. 

And then we have the third result. The surrender 
OE SELF iisr SIMPLE FAITH. There came a deep feeling 
of love for the Master, possessing all his heart, and 
a clear and henceforth undaunted strength, of which we 
shall see more and more as we follow the after-course of his 
life. 

The narrative leaves him, outside the palace of the High 
Priest, ''weeping bitterly." It presents him again with 
John on the Lord's day morning, running to the sepulchre. 
What a Sabbath those two brethren had passed ! They were 
the two maturest fruits, thus far, of the kingdom of heaven 
among men, the melted heart of John and the broken heart 
of Peter. 

We may suppose that they did not fail to come together 
from time to time during that day of terror, but it was not 
strange that Peter should shrink from the position at the foot 
of the cross, to which John was drawn. But the Sabbath must 
have been a day with them of the blending of new and 
strange communions, a day of faith, resting upon new and deep 
experiences of their souls, and prevailing even in the midst of 
the power of darkness which seemed to shroud everything 
around them. One of those "days known to the Lord, not 



PETEB, THE SMITTEN ROCK. 231 

day nor night, but at eventime there shall be light," (Zech. 
xiv: V). But on the early morrow morning came a wonder- 
ful word; the women said that the tomb was empty. It found 
them together, Peter and the '< other disciple." Peter does 
not draw back now, but seems to have been first to start and 
first to enter the sepulchre. During the day, the Lord ap- 
peared to him again, as it would seem by himself, and we 
have no record of what passed in that interview, perhaps the 
first time the disciple had met the eye of the Lord, since that 
look in the palace of the High Priest. 

Next we see him on the Sea of Galilee in the gray of 
the morning. In a stranger on the beach, the quick sense 
of the loved disciple discovers the Lord, and at the word, 
Peter throws himself into the sea. After their breakfast Jesus 
searches his heart with the question, '^Lovest thou me?" 
Three times the question, and three times the unshaken an- 
swer, rising on the third to that high confession and that 
bold profession, ''Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest 
that I love thee. " The heart that had been searched by that 
look of the Lord, had learned a lesson respecting vain con- 
fidence and of the deceitfulness of the heart. But the heart, 
which had been sought out by the tender compassion of the 
Lord even in such a fall, and had been sustained by His 
prayer in its fearful danger and its bitterness of remorse, did 
know that it loved Him, and standing even in the light of 
His searching eye, and with its own apostasy for the dark 
background, it could not say less than ' ' Thou knowest that 
I love thee. " But there is here none of the old self-confi- 
dence, but rather the fulfilment of the prayer that his faith 
fail not, and the preparation for the strengthening of the 
brethren. He is the Rock, but not that isolated Rock of the 
Desert which Christ found him. He has now become a 
hewn stone for the Temple of the Lord, as he himself de- 
scribes it in his Epistle. He says, ''As new-born babes de- 



232 8EBM0NS. 

sire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby, 
if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to whom 
coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men but 
chosen of God and precious, ye also as lively stones are built 
up a spiritual house. " So Christ who built the worlds, was 
building His church, so that the gates of hell should not pre- 
vail against it. Himself is the chief corner-stone, and the 
twelve foundations were to be the twelve apostles of the 
Lamb. All His life has been spent in preparing them, and 
especially in His last agony He has fitted, and now by His 
blood has cemented to Himself, those two, that were to be 
built next Himself, one on the side of fervent zeal, and the 
other on that of deep communion. 

Thus have the scenes of that trial changed the style of 
the rocky texture of the disciple's character. It has been dis- 
integrated and dissolved by that fierce temptation, and 
crystallized anew, under the influence of that look, after the 
model of the Rock of Ages. 

The most marked effect of that scene, through the whole 
life of Peter, was the merging of himself in his Master. 
With such an one as John, the forming of himself into the 
image of Christ was a gradual process. He beheld in the 
'* Word made flesh" the glory full of grace and truth, and 
^ ' of his fulness he received and grace for grace," and Paul 
^^ beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, was changed 
into the same image from glory to glory." But 
not so with Peter. Up to the moment when he 
put his sword back in its sheath in Gethsemane, he was 
Simon Peter, a staunch adherent of the Lord, because he 
was a staunch man. His countenance stands before us fixed 
and rigid and self-willed. But from the time it was bathed 
in those tears we see that expression no more. It is not in 
the eager face of him that ran to the sepulchre. It is not in 
the earnest gaze of him who said, ''Thou knowest that I 



PETEB, THE SMITTEN BOCK. 233 

love thee." It is not the tender aspect of him that looked 
upon the lame man at the Beautiful Gate. By what magic 
have those strong features caught the aspect of that Lamb of 
God, who 'turned and looked upon Peter ?" And his words 
are changed too. " Ye men of Israel, why look ye so earn- 
estly upon us, as though by our own power or holiness we 
had made this man to walk ?" Or read those addresses of 
Peter at Pentecost, or at the healing of the lame man, and 
see if the blended power of truth upon the mind, of faithful 
reproof upon the conscience, and of loving kindness upon 
the heart, is anything else than a translation into words of 
that look, which the Lord, when He turned, imprinted upon 
Peter's soul? 

The subject is full of illustration and suggestion. It 
shows us the secret history and the relations of the tempta- 
tions which befall men. 

Here was a soul fearfully entangled in the snare of the 
adversary. But it was only by the permission of the Father, 
and the temptation itself was the means of bringing about 
the purification, though so as by fire, of a soul which needed 
an ordeal. It was a great part of the struggle and of the tri- 
umph of the Son of Man over the prince of this world. 
The same strife with the rulers of the darkness of this world, 
with spiritual wickedness in high places, goes on to-day. 
Satan sifts the chosen ones of Christ, and the Savior prays 
for them, not for his apostles only, but for them that should 
believe on Him through their word. Simon Peter is our ex- 
ample. ''And when thou art converted," Jesus said to him, 
''strengthen the brethren." So in his Epistle he calls upon 
them that are under temptations to rejoice, " that the trial of 
your faith, being much more precious than of gold that per- 
isheth, though tried by fire, might be found unto praise and 
lionor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." A great 
temptation is an opportunity for a great purifying of the soul 



23 i SERMONS. 

and a great glorifying of God. But sometimes we do not 
consider what the great temptations are. Peter had braced 
himself against them. If the High Priest had called him 
into the presence of the council, perhaps he would have 
stood firm and gone with Jesus to prison and to death. But 
when he was talking with those girls and servants by the fire 
and the door, he was off his guard. How many a man, who 
would go to the stake, denies the Lord that bought him, by 
his little follies. Look up! The eye of Jesus is upon you! 

See again Christ's method of dealing with a soul — so 
faithfully, so tenderly. If he sees that Satan has a snare for 
the soul, He says so. He has none of that civility which 
will stand out of the way aud let a soul go down to death. 
But how does He save it? First, He prays for it, and then 
he warns it, and then he watches it, and in the critical mo- 
ment he meets it with truth, with reproof, with love, slaying 
the old, creating the new, and in place of the vain and fatal 
pride and passion and ambition of man's heart, forming there 
a soul ''kept by the power of God through faith." 

Thus we get some idea of what is meant by the new 
man, and by the forming of Christ within us. John, the 
sweet spirit, after that blessed hour in the bosom of the 
Lord, loved to translate his name — ''Johanan," ''Jehovah's 
Grace" — into the dear form "Jesus loved." It was still the 
same combination of thought, but full of the sweetness of 
the old commandment made new in Christ. So Peter, the 
strong spirit, after that night at the High Priest's palace, was 
still the rock, but not left to stand in the midst of the new 
world, like Petra, the old Rock City of the desert, wonder- 
ful but desolate. He is a precious living stone in the New 
Jerusalem. He is no more a rough crag of old Sinai, but, 
like Mount Athos hewn to the likeness of a king, he stands 
as part of the mountain of the Lord's house, presenting, even 
in his rocky brow, the loving aspect of the Savior of men. 



PETER, TEE SMITTEN ROCK. 235 

What Jesus did for Peter and for John, He is ready to 
do, and, so far as His work is concerned, is hourly doing for 
you and for every soul that will receive Him. He calls us 
to His bosom, or He casts us into manifold temptations, ac- 
cording as, by one or by the other, He may form us to His 
image and fit us for His work and for His blessedness. 

So let us, as we close this study, lay to heart those words 
with which Peter closes his last Epistle: '^Te therefore, 
beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye 
also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from 
your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him 
be glory both now and forever. Amen." 



VL 

BARNABAS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION, 



Barnaba-s, the Son of Consolation. 

Acts iv: 36. 

Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas (which is, being in- 
terpreted, the Son of Consolation). 

Let me introduce to you an old acquaintance, whom I 
hope that you will love to know hereafter as a friend and 
helper. 

Among the men chosen of God to preach His new Gospel, 
was one of such marked qualities that the apostles gave him 
a new name, which fitted him so well that it entirely took 
the place of his former name. The Hebrew name, Barnabas, 
would signify Son of the Inspired Word, using the same 
term which in the book of Chronicles described the word of 
Azariah, the son of Oded, to King Asa, " The Lord is with 
you while ye be with Him; be strong, therefore, and let not 
your hands be weak; for your work shall be rewarded;" and 
which is used again for the exhortation by which Haggai, the 
Prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, inspirited the 
builders of the second temple. The Greek term signifies, *' Son 
of exhortation, " or ' ' of cheering on. " We may say that the Heb- 
rew means the son of the inspired word, and the Greek means 
the son of the inspiriting word, and that both were in the 
idea of the character of him whom the apostles called the 
Son of Inspiration. The Hebrew expresses the word as it 
wells up, like a gushing fountain, from a heart which is full 
of the Spirit of God. The Greek expresses the same word 
as it comes to another human heart, full of the fruit of the 
Spirit. 

239 



240 SERMONS. 

What it meant, as applied to Joses, the Levite from 
Cyprus, may appear the better, as we see more of the man. 

We see him first in the first practical crisis of the Church. 
A multitude of poor Jews and strangers from all parts of the 
world had received the Gospel. They could not bear to go 
away and leave the word of life behind them, and they could 
get little employment from the rich men of Jerusalem. The 
Church is disheartened. It needs the word of cheer, and in 
such a case the word of cheer is the deed of help, and the 
'^Son of the Cheering Word" comes forward; ^'and Joses, 
who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, a Levite and 
of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought 
the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet. " The problepi 
was solved, and the narrative warrants us to suppose that 
Barnabas was, if not the first, at least the most prominent 
example of that liberality with which those first disciples ' ' had 
all things common, and sold their possessions and goods, and 
parted to all, as any had need, and continuing daily in the 
Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat 
their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." 

We do not meet him again, by name, for some years. No 
doubt he had his part in those discussions in the synagogue 
of the Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians and 
Asiatics, from which the vehement Stephen and the furious 
Saul came out, the one as martyr and the other as *' consent- 
ing unto his death." We will not doubt that he was 
among the '^ devout men," who ^^ carried Stephen to his 
burial, and made great lamentation over him," while, ''as 
for Saul, he made havoc of the Church," and his persecuting 
rage hurries him off to Damascus. We may easily credit 
the tradition that Saul and Joses were old friends, pupils 
together under Gamaliel. Years pass. Communication is 
cut off by the agitations of the country, in which Damascus 
has passed for the time into the hands of Aretas, King of 



BABNABAS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION. 241 

Arabia, and yet, no doubt, tbe prayer of Barnabas has gone 
after his old college friend, whom his generous heart will not 
give up, even though he has seen him keeping the garments 
of the murderers of Stephen. 

Suddenly Saul appears again, and approaches the disciples, 
*^but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he 
was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to 
the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the 
Lord in the way, and that He had spoken to him, and how 
he had preached boldly at Damascus, in the name of Jesus." 
Perhaps there were none in the company of the living disci- 
ples who had suffered so much abuse from Saul of Tarsus as 
his old acquaintance, Joses, and Saul's heart was touched at 
finding his hand and heart so open to receive him. Paul 
needed Barnabas, as Simon Peter needed John, to teach 
him elements of Christian character, which were not easy 
for him to learn. Tongues of men, or even of angels, 
prophecy, mysteries, and all knowledge, and even faith that 
could remove mountains, did not astonish the mighty soul of 
Saul so much. The lavish bounty which could give all its 
goods to the poor, or even the devotion which could give its 
body to the flames, did not overcome him, but the charity, 
which ' ' suff ereth long and is kind, which is not easily pro- 
voked, and thinketh no evil, beareth all things^ believeth all 
things, endm-eth all things," stood before his mind as the 
greatest of all. He had seen Stephen's miracles, and they 
did not move him, but Stephen's dying, prayer he never could 
forget. Barnabas, giving his goods to the poor, did not 
convert him, but when Barnabas took him so kindly by the 
hand, red as his hand was with those blood-stains which 
would not out, he led him like a lamb. Most precious to 
himself and to the Church was the education, which, begin- 
ning that day, and reaching on through many years, the vehe- 
ment apostle received through his generous friend. 



242 SERMONS. 

Tears pass again. Saul has gone to Tarsus, and Barna- 
bas has remained at Jerusalem, in usefulness constant but 
unrecorded, for history tells what is done by storms, but not 
often what is done by the shining of the sun. New tidings 
come to the ears of the church at Jerusalem. Some men of 
Cyprus and Cyrene have gone to Antioch, and there have 
preached to Grecians that Jesus is the Lord, and a great 
number of them have believed and turned to the Lord. Here 
is an irregularity. Can such things be allowed? ^'They 
sent forth Barnabas that he should go as far as Antioch." 
Barnabas was a Levite, full of learning, full of dignity, versed 
in the law and in the gospel, and, moreover, being himself of 
the country of Cyprus, he will be better able than any other 
man to correct these extravagancies. Here then we have the 
Son of Inspiration as an inquisitor. How does he perform 
his office? " When he came and had seen the grace of God, 
he was glad, and exhorted them all," (those Greeks who 
were fearing the sentence of exclusion) " that with purpose 
of heart they would cleave unto the Lord, for he was a good 
man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." The effect of his 
inspired and inspiriting word was soon manifest, ' ' for much 
people was added unto the Lord." How precious a grace it 
is to be able to throw ourselves with heart and hand and word 
of cheer into a good work of the Lord! There was the 
smoking flax; the hand of Barnabas might have quenched it. 
His breath encouraged it, and up flamed a light to the Gen- 
tiles. 

That story tells us what the apostles meant by the name 
Barnabas, " the son of the word of God which wells up in 
the prophet's heart," and how Luke came to interpret it by the 
Greek, ''the Son of Cheering on." When he saw the grace 
of God, he did not ask the scribes if this was according to the 
tradition of the elders, but he spoke out the voice of the 
Spirit which was in his heart, and said, Go on! or rather, 



BABNABAS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION, 243 

Come on! ''Come with us and we will do you good," as Moses, 
the Levite of old, had done and would have done again. For 
you remember how ' ' there ran a young man and told Moses 
and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp. And 
Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his 
young men, answered and said, my Lord Moses, forbid them; 
and Moses said unto him, enviest thou for my sake ? Would 
God that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the 
Lord would put his Spirit upon them! And Moses gat him 
into the camp, he and the elders of Israel. " Moses, who was 
so ready to go into the camp-meeting when he saw that the 
Lord was there, would have rejoiced to throw himself into 
that first revival which was sweeping in Gentiles as well as 
Jews, and to say to those Greeks, as he said to his Arab 
friend, " Come with us and we will do you good." 

In the great revival which sprang up around them they 
needed help at Antioch, and ''Barnabas departed to Tarsus 
for to seek Saul; and when he had found him he brought 
him unto Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year 
they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much 
people." 

In those days came the prophetic warning of the famine 
which came to pass in the days of Claudius Csssar, and the 
church of Antioch sent relief to the brethren in Judea. The Son 
of Inspiration, who had animated the liberality of the infant 
church after Pentecost, was probably not the last suggestor nor 
the least subscriber in this movement, and so he, who had come 
down to Antioch a year before with his heart full of the word 
of cheer, goes back now with his hands full of the act of grati- 
tude and help. Barnabas probably, and Saul with him, 
comes to the house of his kinswoman, Mary the mother of 
John Mark. They come at the Passover, but they find sor- 
row and fear among the disciples. 



244 ^irilJIOJS^S. 

Herod Agrippa, grandson of him who slew the babes at 
Bethlehem, has received the government of Judea from the 
Emperor Claudius, and has killed James the brother of John 
with the sword, and Peter now lies in prison and is to be 
brought forth to the people after the feast, and prayer with- 
out ceasing is going up from the church to God for him. 
The very night has come which was to be his last. Peter 
was sleeping, but not the church. As the evening gathered 
they came quietly into this house of Mary, and joined their 
prayers. That was a prayer meeting worth recording. There, 
perhaps, was John, full of love and sorrow for the brother he 
had lost; there was Saul, full of zeal, and there w^as Barnabas, 
full of faith; there were the women, full of prayer; there 
was Christ, unseen but full of grace and of secret bounty. 
There is a knock at the door. They are startled, and look 
at one toother, remembering how in the former persecution 
such a knock as that would be their first intimation that Saul 
of Tarsus had found out their resort. But this time it was 
no second Saul, but a visitor more startling still to feeble 
human faith, the very Peter for whom they have prayed. 

From a visit signalized by such a scene, Barnabas and 
Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had done their 
errand, and took with them that same John Mark, at 
whose mother's house that strange prayer meeting had 
been held. 

The Lord had brought his first missionaries to Jerusalem 
just before they were to enter upon their great work, and had 
called them there to pass through scenes which were invalu- 
able as preparation for their life-work. But it is to be ob- 
served that their commission as missionaries is not dated at 
Jerusalem. Not there, or on Gerizim, or at any spot on 
earth, was to be the center of His worship. The center of 
Christianity among men is wherever is most of the Spirit and 
of the truth. He brings them back to Antioch, and there, '' as 



BABNABAS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION. 245 

they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, 
separate me Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I 
have called them." And when did He call them? See how 
patiently God educates His chosen ministers. Twelve years 
have already passed since Saul was called at Damascus ' ' to 
bear Christ's name before the Gentiles," and Barnabas has 
been in the church for a still longer time. Both were ma- 
ture and leading men before, and highly educated in both 
Jewish and Gentile accomplishment. Barnabas was a wealthy 
Levite from the country of Cyprus, an island not more sur- 
rounded by the waters of the Mediterranean than it was 
bathed by all the currents of ancient culture. And Saul was 
a Jew of Tarsus, the chief seat then of Gentile learning, 
and himself brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel. 
He had the miraculous teaching of the works and the Spirit 
of God, and yet he must have years in Arabia, and years 
more in Tarsus and in Antioch, before he is ready to go forth 
with the Gospel for the nations. 

But now they go forth, two men in middle life, Barnabas, 
the Levite, and Saul, the Benjamite, with the young John 
Mark for their helper. First they sail to Cyprus, the old 
home of Barnabas, where, perhaps, his own personal stand- 
ing gained them an undisturbed audience in the synagogues, 
as well as access to the Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paulus. 
Thence they cross to the south coast of Asia Minor, and 
labor among the lawless tribes who lived about the Taurus 
Mountains ; tribes who from century to century refused to be 
tamed by the empires of Nineveh, of Persia and of Rome, 
as now they are not tamed by the Turkish Empire. The heart 
of their young associate failed him, and he drew back before 
they entered the mountains; but the matured men went on, 
and in city after city they found the same barbarian enter- 
tainment—first welcomed and then driven out by the mob. 
Lystra is an example of all, and illustrates the character of 



246 SBBMOJSrS. 

the mission as well as of the people. Here a cripple lay at 
the gate. His ready faith prepares him, when Paul gave the 
word, to leap up and walk, and his countrymen are ready to 
recognize their gods in the men who had done the miracle; 
and with them a thought was a word and a deed, and the 
thought and the deed, as well as the speech, were in the 
idiom of Lycaonia. 

On that same plain, the legend ran that in old time 
Jupiter and Mercury came down and walked among men, 
seeking hospitality, but no one received them, except a 
poor and aged couple — Philemon, whose name was borne by 
Paul's friend, and Baucis. The deities change the inhospit- 
able town into a lake, except the poor cottage of their hosts, 
which becomes a splendid temple with themselves for its 
priests, until, in a good old age and in the same hour, they 
are changed, he to an oak and she to a linden tree, on which 
they that passed by used to hang garlands, and to say *' Cura 
pii.dis sunt et qui coluere coluntur." *'The pious are God's 
care, and them that honor Him He will honor!" There, 
too, Apollonius of Tyana, who studied at Tarsus, and may 
have been classmate there with Barnabas and Paul, was wor- 
shiped as a god. These people, then, cried out in the speech 
of Lycaonia, ' ' the gods are come down to us in the likeness of 
men." And they called Paul, Mercurius, because he was the 
chief speaker, but Barnabas they called Jupiter. This title 
may give us an idea of the noble presence which accom- 
panied that generous heart, from which used to come those 
inspiring words in one crisis after another of the church, and 
which made such an impression that not only did those rude 
men, in the speech of Lycaonia exclaim, * ' The gods are come 
down to us in the likeness of men," but the apostles them- 
selves, in their own Hebrew tongue, called him Barnabas — 
'nhe Son of Inspiration." These pagans recognize in Bar- 
nabas a power not of many words, but of that sway which 



BABNAB^iS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION. 247 

goes out from a great, true man in his silence as well as in 
his speech, a still might, from which the very vehemence of 
Paul drew a chief element of its power. But when the 
priest of Jupiter brought oxen and garlands and would have 
done sacrifice, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
spoke. For we can hardly be mistaken in ascribing to Bar- 
nabas, to whom the sacrifice was to be offered, those great 
simple words, ^'Sirs, why do ye these things? We also 
are men like you, and bring you glad tidings, that ye should 
turn from these vain things to the God that lives, that made 
heaven and earth and sea and all things that are in them, who 
in past generations permitted all nations to walk in their own 
ways; and still left Himself not without witness, doing good, 
giving us rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our 
hearts with food and gladness." 

When we remember that Palm Sunday and Good Friday 
are in the same week, we need not wonder that we next hear 
of Paul stoned and dragged out of the gate of this same 
Lystra and left for dead. 

We have not time or need to dwell upon the rest of their 
mission, their return to Antioch, their visit to Jerusalem 
and their subsequent labors in Antioch. 

Upon the proposition of a new missionary journey, the 
old friends and co-laborers are separated. We see their part- 
ing with a degree of pain, and yet probably it was for the 
best. Paul had been long enough with Barnabas to learn much 
which it was good for him to learn as of that large Christian 
generosity and breadth of soul, which he needed as the com- 
plement to his own directness and vehemence. Saul was a 
Benjamite. Perhaps his quick left hand could sling a stone 
at a hair and not miss. If he needed anything in order to 
be a complete Christian, it was a large open right hand, and 
it was good economy to keep even the largest heart in the 
Christian church behind him, with reference to his own edu- 



248 SERMONS, 

cation, as well as for the present effect of their ministry; 
that the dignity of the one might give power to the force of 
the other, as the weight of the deep phalanx urges the point 
of the foremost spear. Paul's Epistles are full of the evi- 
dence of the value of the influence of his friend, who was so 
great in charity, and if that element of the apostolic char- 
acter is as important as Paul makes it, we Gentiles must 
ever be thankful for the influence by which it was made to 
grow upon a stock, which had naturally so much of the wild 
olive as had the apostle of the Gentiles. 

But it was time for each of them to take his own work; 
and their separation was characteristic. The fervent Paul 
could not think of taking with them that John Mark, '^ who 
left them in Pamphylia and went not with them to the work." 
The generous Barnabas could not think of rejecting his 
young cousin and friend, who was disposed again to be a 
missionary. Both were right. It was not best that Mark 
should go with Paul. Where Paul went storms gathered; 
Paul had nerve enough to fight through them ; Barnabas had 
character enough to be unshaken by them. Perhaps Mark had 
neither in such eminence as such a case required. But still 
he was a choice spirit, and we, that have Mark's gospel, may 
be grateful that the noble Christian, through whom the Lord 
had done so much for Paul, did not cast him off. And Paul 
himself is our witness, that his generosity was not lost. Paul's 
witness is a noble evidence of the work of grace in both 
himself and Mark. In ten years more, Paul was in prison at 
Rome, and Mark was with him, and is commended by him 
to the church at Colosse as a fellow-worker who had been a 
comfort to him. In six years after that Paul was a prisoner 
again, and the time of his departure was at hand. We have 
the last gushings of his heart, as he poured them forth in his 
last letter to Timothy, and among them is this, '' Take Mark 
aud bring him with thee; for he is profitable to me for the 



BARNABAS, THE SON OF CONSOLATION. 249 

ministry." No doubt the mellowed heart of the great apostle 
brought forth rich thankfulness for the grace poured forth 
upon Barnabas, that he did not break, when it was bruised, 
the reed on which Paul, the aged and the dying, now longs 
to lean. 

Such was Barnabas, ''the Son of Inspiration." A chief 
light in the early church; a light, not as of lightning, but 
as of the sun; a chief power, not to destroy but to build. 
Perhaps it may have been a fault in him not to be able to 
say, ''No. " But when we see again and again how much sal- 
vation there was in the full and round "Yes," that rose from 
the bottom of his heart, when every other man would have 
said no, we may learn to rejoice, as Paul did, in that 
preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ which " is not yea 
and nay, but in Him is yea. " 

If there is too much in the world of the yes, which 
expresses only the weakness or the hypocrisy of the natural 
heart, there is also too much of the no, which expresses man's 
sourness and alienation from his brother, and there is all too 
little of that yes, welling up like the word of the old proph- 
ets, from the honest depths of a heart in which the love of 
God is perfected, and which answers on earth to the voice 
from on high, of " the Amen, the faithful and true witness, 
the beginning of the creation of God," of that Son of God, 
in whom "all the promises of God are yea and in Him amen 
unto the glory of God by us." 

Such a " Son of Inspiration" is precious in what he is, 
even more than in what he does. What Barnabas gave to the 
poor was large, but the charity which his word and example 
called out was, and is, boundless. The generosity of his own 
heart was noble. That which he kindled in others ennobled all 
the church in his day. It should enlarge your soul and mine 
to-day, and will enlarge hearts till the time when all are 
gathered in the great heart of the Savior. Like his is every 



250 8EEM0NS. 

day the influence of a large heart in any community. Out 
of it are issues of life, of that full true life, which, rejoicing 
in the Lord always, runs in the way of God's command- 
ments, mounts up with wings as eagles, runs and is not 
weary, walks and faints not, until it enters into the joy of 
the Lord, 



VII. 

PAUL BEFORE NERO. 



Paul Before Nero. 



IITimotliy i:12. 



I am not ashamed; for I know in whom I have believed, and am per^ 
suaded that He is able to keep that which I haye committed unto Him 
against that day. 

This Second Epistle to Timothy is the last written of 
Paul's Epistles, and the only record which Scripture gives us 
of a most striking event in the history of Christianity — the 
appearance of Paul, the Apostle, before the Emperor Xero. 
The point of view in which the scene is brought before us is 
that which presents to us the inner heart of the martyr, at the 
moment when he unbends himself from the bracing for a 
fearful trial, to hold refreshing communion with the human 
spirit upon which he most relied. 

Written from '^ Paul the aged," to his young pupil, Tim- 
othy, it is full of that peculiar, mellow grace which marks 
the attitude of one who is spending the last .days of a good 
life, if he has been so happy as to find a young man in whom 
he may recognize, as it were, the spirit of his own life begin- 
ning a new course, and with whose young fervor and strength 
he may blend his own mature wisdom and grace. In such a 
light, this Epistle to Timothy seems like Paul's mantle falling 
from the midst of his chariot of fire upon his Elisha. There 
is with it also a grand pathos in the refreshment and new 
strength which seems to come to the old hero in his need at 
the thought of such young and true devotion. 

It would seem, from the Epistle itself, that the time when 
it was written was after Paul's first appearance before Nero, 
during his second imprisonment at Rome. Nero is a name 

253 



254 SERMONS. 

which is going down, like that of Judas Iscariot, to the ab- 
horrence of the successive generations. There have been many 
traitors, and many bloody tyrants among men since the world 
began, but among them all, it has been the peculiar distinc- 
tion of Iscariot and of Caesar Nero to have become the proverb 
of the civilized world; the one for falseness, and the other, 
though he died at the age of thirty-two, for demoniacal 
tyranny. 

In order to understand Paul's situation, we should under- 
stand Nero and his persecutions. Nero was the union of the 
two kinds of tyrants — the exalted brute and the fallen angel. 
He was educated in Asiatic lust, in Greek philosophy and 
art, and in Occidental barbarity. He loved music, as he loved 
blood; he took pleasure in beholding the movements of grace- 
fulness, and the writhings of pain. Cruelty and slaughter 
were not so much an employment with him, as a racy flavor 
to give zest to the brutal entertainments which he used to 
enjoy with his populace. 

We have it upon heathen authority that he was wont to 
take delight in uniting the gratification of his taste with that 
of his cruelty, in the persecution of Christians. For Nero 
was a man of taste; he had his love for the beautiful. He 
was a delicate, beardless youth, until his gross indulg- 
ences disfigured his comeliness, passionately fond of music, 
enjoying the Grecian games, rejoicing in magnificence of 
scenery, exulting in the grandeur of the scene when Rome 
was in flames, and expressing his transport in bursts of music. 
He was not without an eye for more quiet and picturesque 
beauty. His palace was surrounded with gardens, in which 
he delighted; and the view of them which pleased him best 
was when the living body of a martyr had been smeared 
with pitch and placed in some choice position, so that, as the 
flames rose from it, the light shone up among the boughs of 
the over-arching trees, and spread itself over the lawns and 



PAUL BEFORE NERO. 255 

among the rose beds and the playing fountains. He loved, 
too, in the amphitheater, to behold his victims, clad in the 
skins of beasts and beset by hunting dogs. 

It was, as has been supposed, before this ''smooth-faced 
demon " that Paul was called to appear. It was a fearful 
ordeal to pass, because he had to fear not only injustice but 
that vulgar passion for cruel insult, by which Nero always 
studied how he might make brutal sport for himself and the 
populace of the sufferings of the innocent. 

And now there was a rare opportunity for the indulgence 
of so fiendish a taste. Paul, the chief preacher of the Christ- 
ians, was in Rome, an old man. Every one knew him who 
knew anything about Christianity. There could not be a 
more merry spectacle for that brutalized emperor and rabble 
than to bring him forth into the amphitheatre to glut their 
thirst for sport and blood. 

This peculiar feature of Nero's persecution, the vulgar 
delight of the emperor in turning his cruelties to the brutal 
amusement of the rabble of which, in spirit, himself was one, 
explains the emphasis laid throughout this Epistle upon the 
temptation to be ashamed of Christianity. 

The occasion of Paul's first appearance seems to have 
brought together in the Imperial Basilica a great multi- 
tude of people; for Paul speaks of ''all the Gentiles" hear- 
ing his plea. This multitude was probably composed of 
those who most enjoyed such entertainments as Nero was ac- 
customed to furnish; a populace who had beheld mortal com- 
bats of gladiators "butchered to make a Roman holiday," 
until that had become a tame amusement. It was not strange 
that such a judge, surrounded by and sympathizing with 
such a multitude, made an assemblage into which a Christian 
would not be forward to enter. 

If any one should, in sympathy for the prisoner, try the 
experiment, it would not be unlikely that the mob would 



25G SERMONS. 

assault him, to relieve the tedium of awaiting the progress of 
the cumbrous forms of judicature in the case of the chief 
prisoner, as the Greeks in Corinth beat Sosthenes before 
Gallio's judgment seat, or as the Roman soldiers mocked 
Jesus in the Pretorium at Jerusalem. Yet it was just the 
scene in which the accused most feels the need of some sympa- 
thizing friends upon whom his eye can rest. But Paul as he 
looked around the multitude found not one. IsTow that he was 
past the trial and pouring forth his heart to his young friend, 
the shock which that forsaking gave to his feelings recurs 
again and again. He writes: '' Greatly desiring to see him." 
He says, ''Be not thou ashamed of the testimony of our 
Lord nor of me his prisoner," and a little further on, ''I 
suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed; for I 
know in whom I have believed," and again, ''This thou 
knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from 
me. " Again, after he has refreshed his mind with counsels to 
his pupil and recurrence to the scenes through which they 
had both passed, his mind reverts to the same scene, " At my 
first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me; 
I pray God that it be not laid to their charge." 

There stood Paul, the aged servant of God^ unbefriended 
in such an audience. It was a contrast of weakness and 
might, a double contrast; on one side was the strength of the 
iron empire which ruled the world; on the other was Paul. 
There was a contrast, too, of moral force. With Paul was a 
" spirit, not of fear but of power and of love and of a sound 
mind;" and on the other side was moral timorousness and 
weakness and hate and insanity. The one man stood not 
alone, but '^the Lord stood with him and strengthened him; 
that by him the preaching might be fully known, and that all 
the Gentiles might hear." It was a fair meeting of physical 
with moral strength; of audacity with courage; of frenzied 
passion wdth the collectedness of a right mind and heart. 



PAUL BEFOBE NERO, 257 

Imagine the scene as he enters. The Jew that sets him- 
self forth for a prophet and decries the gods of Rome, 
stands alone between the pomp of the court and the wild 
populace. No man appears as his advocate. The accu- 
sation is read and opportunity is given for any to speak for 
the defense, and the prisoner rises. 

The curiosity to hear what the Jew will say produces a 
stillness in the assembly. They thought to make new sport 
of his apology or supplication. They beheld his weak bodily 
presence, and now they waited for his contemptible speech. 
But they had mistaken the man. He was the same who had 
in his earlier years been arraigned before their governor, 
Felix, and he had then reasoned of righteousness and temper- 
ance and a judgment yet to come, so that the judge trembled 
before the prisoner. And now the Lord was helping him, as 
he stood before a judge and in the midst of a people, illy pre- 
pared to resist the command of moral power, the dignity of a 
benevolent heart and the phalanx of a sound mind. It had 
been worth something to hear that plea. We know its 
subject, "By him the preaching was fully known, and all the 
Gentiles heard," and we know its effect. ''He was delivered 
out of the mouth of the lion." But we can only imagine how 
its winning words and forceful sentences made their way 
alike through court and crowd, enchaining attention and com- 
manding respect. 

Shall we venture to imagine the tone of that plea? 

' ' 1 count myself happy, most august Csssar, and ye Romans, 
the ruling people of the world, that I am permitted to 
stand before you, and make my plea here, in the citadel of 
the nations; that I may vindicate myself, as a Roman citizen, 
who has always been loyal to Rome, ever rendering to Csesar 
the honor which is his due; and also that I may pro- 
claim the words of salvation for all the ends of the earth, 
even the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath abolished 



258 SEBM0N8. 

death, and brought life and immortality to light, through the 
gospel, whereunto I also am appointed a preacher and an 
Apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles; for which cause I also 
suffer these things; nevertheless, I am not ashamed. They 
threaten me with crucifixion; I preach a crucified Savior; 
from long ago I am crucified to the world and the world to 
me. If I suffer with my Lord I shall also reign with Him! 
This is a high tribunal, and I stand before it a stranger, 
without a single advocate to support my cause; nevertheless, 
I am not abashed; for this tribunal, the most august of this 
world, reminds me of another, more august than this, where 
all of us, the small and the great, shall stand before God, 
and shall be judged, every man according to his works. 
Then, more than now, shall I stand in need of an advocate, 
and I know in whom I have believed; and am persuaded 
that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him 
against that day. God grant that thou, O CaBsar, come not 
before that judgment seat, as I come now before thee, a stran- 
ger, without an advocate." 

With such and more winning and cogent words, does 
Paul, in his spirit, not of fear but of power, gain the com- 
mand of his audience. Now was the critical opportunity for 
the orator, who has so suddenly become not a culprit but a 
preacher. Now the spirit of courage and power which has 
quelled their passion becomes a spirit of love, which wins 
their hearts; and then, the spirit of a sound mind, which 
instructs their strangely wakened, intelligence in the truths 
of God's salvation. So as the Lord stood with him and 
strengthened him, the preaching was fully known, and 
he was '' delivered out of the mouth of the lion." And 
this was the victory by which he overcame the world, 
even his faith. And now that we have seen how great a 
triumph was wrought, we are ready to inquire, what was the 
faith which was so victorious? 



PAUL BEFORE NERO, 259 

Paul expresses it in our text: ''I know in whom I have 
believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that 
which I have committed unto Him against that day." 

He was not afraid of any crisis, because he had entrusted 
all that he cared to keep to One who he knew would keep it 
for him against the day of reckoning. 

What was it that Paul had entrusted? Some men entrust 
their property, their persons, their fame, but neither of these 
was Paul's trust. Paul, with all his power, was a simple 
hearted, j)ious man, and he had entrusted the keeping of his 
own soul to a faithful Creator, and in this honest simplicity 
lies much of the sublimity of his character. He, himself, 
had believed the word that he spoke. Thirty years before, 
his own eyes had seen the Just One in His glory, at midday, 
by Damascus; and then he had said, ''Lord, what wilt 
Thou have me to do?" Thus did he consecrate himself to 
the Lord that appeared to him in the way, and thenceforth 
''he was not his own, but bought with a price." He had 
given his soul to Jesus, and that phrase meant something 
with him. 

As Stephen said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and 
died; so Paul, from the hour when he gave his spirit into the 
keeping of Christ, accounted himself as dead, and his life as 
hid with Christ in God. Other men, ' ' through fear of 
death, are ail their lifetime subject to bondage." For they 
dread to leave these scenes, where all their treasures and their 
hearts are, to enter a state for which they have made no pro- 
vision. But Paul had already died to this world. He had 
begun the life of another world, and so all the bitterness of 
death was passed; and who should harm him now? 

We have sometimes followed with our sympathies a vic- 
tim of brutal tyranny, or of the Inquisition, or of slavery, 
suffering all that the malice or caprice of man could inflict, 
*' the bitter in soul which long for death, but it cometh not; 



260 SERMONS. 

and dig for it more than for hid treasures." But at last, in 
some extremity of agony, that great deliverance suddenly 
sets them free, and in a moment the soul is fled forever from 
the tormentors. Then it is a relief to look upon the lifeless 
form; the members that just now were writhing in agony are 
pliant and soft; the countenance, perhaps, in the sudden joy 
of the escaping soul, has changed its anguish to a peaceful 
expression and the first smile that has lighted it since infancy. 
There he is, escaped at last, to '' where the wicked cease from 
troubling and the weary are at rest; where the prisoners rest 
together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor." 

So serene and beyond human assault, though full of in- 
tensest life, was the aspect of Paul before Nero. Such was the 
victory by which his faith then overcame the central power 
of the world. He was dead, his life was on high, and the 
utmost that Nero and his Pretorians could do, could onlv 
sever the little cord which still bound him an unwilling cap- 
tive to this world, and let him '^fly away and be at rest." 
As when a violent man seeks out his foe to wreak his wrath 
upon him and is appalled to find that he has taken refuge 
from him in the peaceful grave, so when Nero, the vicegerent 
of "the prince of this world," ''came" to Paul, the minister 
of Christ, he found ''nothing in him." They beset him 
thinking to overwhelm him with their violence, but when 
they found that none of those things moved him, they were 
thrown back by the recoil of their own assault. Behold a 
greater than Nero was there; a greater than Rome. The 
prisoner was remanded to his confinement and the assembly 
was broken up. 

Remember now what was the secret of this victory of 
Paul. 

He knevv^ in whom he had believed. His belief had con- 
sisted in the entrusting of his own soul to his Savior. He knew 
that he had so entrusted it. He was persuaded that He is able 



PAUL BEFORE NERO. 261 

to keep that trust in that day. His life now was hid with 
Christ in God. But it was waiting for him, and whensoever 
Nero, or any persecutor, should set him free from this prison 
of the body, then he would go to receive that spiritual 
body; that brow crowned with the garland of justification. 

And now the question comes to each one of us — Dost 
thou know in whom thou hast believed? 

How many answers will such a question meet in such an 
assembly as this! How many more would it meet if the heart, 
deceitful above all things, were not continually deceiving it- 
self! One man believes in money, and his soul shall be 
required of him, and then whose shall those things be? An- 
other believes in reputation, loving the praise of men, and 
verily he has his reward. Another believes in himself, and 
so withdraws himself from that sympathy which is essential to 
life. Another believes in his religious observances, or in his 
rectitude of life; another in the judgment of his friends who 
seem to think that he is a Christian. Some do not know in 
whom they have believed. They think it is a dark subject. 
They are not certain in whom they ought to believe, and so 
they let the matter run on, thinking that they may come 
upon more light. But in the meantime the truth stands in- 
flexible, and by it they shall be judged in that day, and no 
man knows how near that day may be. 

There are those here who will say, ''I hope that I have 
believed in Christ." Would that you might know in whom 
you have believed. Assurance like that of Paul is indeed a 
high attainment. It seems that none of the Christians of Rome 
had faith enough to stand by him at his first appearing. Yet 
he shows us that there is such an attainment, and he shows 
us how much it is worth. 

We all need a faith which can stand through such an 
ordeal. Do you think to say that in these quiet. Christian 
times we may dispense with that tension of clinging to eter- 



262 SERMONS. 

nal realities which the days of the martyrs required? Is it not 
true on the other hand that there are dangers to our faith grow- 
ing out of this very quietness? In the fiery trials of the early 
church the pure gold was refined. Men had severe tests by 
which to determine in whom they had believed. 

It is our duty, as it was Paul's, to be witnesses for God. 
His were fiery trials, and he needed that God should stand 
by him, that he might witness a good confession, and he 
needed that Christ should pray for him that his faith might 
not fail. He stood, not because he was strong but because 
Christ was able to make him stand. 

If we have had any experience in the Christian way, we 
know, and if we are just entering that way, we need to be 
well assured, that we want the upholding hand of Him who 
is able to make us stand as much as Paul did. If you will 
study the letter which even in that crisis, Paul, the hero 
Apostle, wrote to his '' son Timothy," you will see and per- 
haps wonder that he dwells upon the simple principles and 
the daily duties by which the Christian man is formed, rather 
than upon his arming for such extraordinary battles. He 
charges him to ''hold fast the form of sound words;" the 
Holy Scriptures which his parents had taught him, and the 
Gospel which Paul had brought; to depart from iniquity, to 
shun lusts and vain speculations. He seems to dread the 
guile of the serpent more than the rage of the lion. 

The fierce adversary is not the most fearful. Remember 
how he came to Eden; not in his own proper character, as the 
spirit of hatred, but with soft words, words of love, as if 
kinder and milder than God himself . ''Yea," hath God said, 
"ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ? " "Ye shall 
not surely die;" and he showed them "that the tree was good 
for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be 
desired to make one wise;" and so they took the fruit and 
here are we. 



PAUL BEFORE NERO. 2G3 

Just so he will come to thee, who art trying to follow 
Christ, suggesting that it is a severe and hard service; that 
the views of those about you are rather strict and puritanical; 
that it is unnatural to keep the Sabbath so stiffly; or to be so 
reverent as Paul and Timothy were of their ^^ holy Scrip- 
tures," and of the faith of forefathers and grandmother and 
mother; that a newer theology is ''to be desired to 
make one wise ; " and that the fashion and gaiety of the 
world is "pleasant to the eyes ;" that a man in this world 
needs to be a little selfish, as well as his neighbors, it is 
''good for food." And so, little by little, you will be drawn 
away from Christ. You are not in so much danger from the 
profanity and drunkenness which you shudder at; though 
let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall even 
into such depths as these! But those beginnings of evil, by 
which the spiritual life leaks out, drop by drop, you are in 
danger from them ; and in order to resist them, we need to 
commit our way to Him who is able to keep that which we 
commit unto Him. 

We need a clear faith and a pure light. For it is a wily, 
lurking tempter that besets us. We need to know in whom 
we have believed, and to have our hopes resting upon that sure 
foundation of God, which hath this seal, " The Lord know- 
eth them that are His," and this, " Let every one that nameth 
the name of Christ depart from iniquity." 

It is the great attainment in Christian knowledge to know 
Him in whom we have believed. To the young believer it is 
a new mine of knowledge, and to many an older one he says, 
in loving reproach, ' ' Have I been so long time with you, 
and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip?" 

Did you ever mark the value that Paul puts upon this 
knowledge? "I count," saith he, "all things .but loss for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, 
that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, 



264 SERMONS, 

and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conforma- 
ble unto His death." So did he desire to know his Lord, 
that he even desired to die as He had died, that he might 
even thus get some sense of the suffering love of Christ. 
Thus, pressing toward the mark, Paul arrived at that knowl- 
edge of Him in whom he had believed which strengthened 
him so at his aj)pearance before Nero. 

And what is it to know Christ? It is to know a friend, 
who loves us as no friend on earth can love, even beyond 
death. It is to know a sympathizing brother, to whom we 
may go with every grief — kind to pity, wise to counsel, mighty 
to save. It is to know a sinless exemplar, a model in our 
own nature of every beauty of character and of mind, and 
to dwell with Him. It is to know a Priest who hath offered 
Himself as our sin offering, acceptable to God. It is to 
know an Advocate — the only one admitted to plead before the 
bar of our Judge, and one to whom we may commit our cause, 
and be assured that he will bear us safely through the trial of 
^nhat day." 

It is to know, in all the trials and temptations of this 
world. One ' ' who is able to keep you from falling, and to 
present you faultless before the presence of His glory with 
exceeding joy, even to know the only wise God, our Savior, 
to whom be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both 
now and ever, amen." 

This is He in whom we have believed, if we have believed 
in Christ. Dost thou know in whom thou hast believed? If 
it be in Christ, He invites you to that intimacy of fellowship 
in which lies all blessing possible to man. '^ Behold, I stand 
at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open 
the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he 
with me." Yet though this be blessedness almost beyond the 
lot of man, there is a higher blessedness of knowledge in 
store: '^ Now we see in a mirror " the mere shadows of the 



PAUL BEFORE NERO. 265 

true, ^' but then face to face; now we know in part, but then 
shall we know even as also we are known." ^' When He 
shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as 
He is." 

And oh, in that day may the Lord know us with ''them 
that are His!" 



VIII. 

THE PURE IN HEART. 



I 



The Pure in Heart. 

Matthew v. 8. 
Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. 

Of this passage, Henry, in his commentary, says with 
beautiful truth, " This is the most comprehensive of all the 
beatitudes; holiness and happiness fully described and put 
together. Here is the most comprehensive character of the 
blessed; they are the pure in heart. Here is the most com- 
prehensive comfort of the blessed; they shall see God." 

In the delightsome contemplation of such a character and 
such a comfort we shall naturally inquire: — Who are the 
pure in heart ? what is it to see God ? how do the pure in 
heart see God ? 

I. Who aee the Pure in Heart? 

Purity of heart, in its more comprehensive Biblical sense, 
denotes not merely freedom from those filthy imaginations 
and unclean desires which we commonly understand by 
impurity, but in general, freedom from any form of evil in 
the heart — a ''heart washed from wickedness," to use the 
expression of Jeremiah (iv. 14) — a clean heart, cleansed of 
earthly ambition, of pride, of the greed of filthy lucre, of 
the rust of selfishness, of the gangrene of lust, of malice and 
envy, of all defilement and debasement of flesh or of spirit — 
a heart fitly clad in that ' ' fine linen, clean and white, which is 
the righteousness of saints;" the virgin purity of heart of 
" them in whose mouth was found no guile, because they are 
Avithout fault before the throne of God," whom he that saw the 
Apocalypse beheld standing ''before the throne and before 

269 



270 8EBM0NS. 

the Lamb, clothed with white robes " — the '' Israelites indeed, 
in whom is no guile." ''Out of the heart," said He who 
knew what is in man, ''proceed evil thoughts, murders, adul- 
teries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; in these 
are the things which defile a man." And so he that hath a 
pure heart must be free from all those springs of evil, from 
which flow such streams or droppings of evil. 

And the Son of God hath said that he that is thus pure 
m heart is blessed, "for he shall see God." 

Such a statement from the Son is full of import, for "no 
man knoweth the Father, save the Son and he to whom the 
Son will reveal Him," This only begotten Son hath thus 
declared him. 

n. What is it to see God? 

God is a spirit. Eye of flesh is not capable of discerning 
His form or distinguishing His presence. Yet may we draw 
near to Him in spirit, we may " worship Him in spirit," we 
may hold communion with His Holy Spirit. To see God is 
with the spiritual sense — with the heart, to recognize His 
being and His presence, to discern His spiritual attributes, if 
we may so speak. His spiritual form and aspect. The one 
intellect of man is associated with a double system of senses 
and perceptive faculties. There are the bodily senses, by 
which we are apprised of the facts of the external world; we 
see, and hear, and smell, and taste, and feel. Through these, 
too, we in general converse with one another. These are the 
senses of man, the mortal. But there is another system of 
senses of man, the living soul, senses by which we spiritually 
discern the world above, by which we commune with God, 
and feel the attraction of heavenly things. Thus man is made 
to live on this earth two lives at once — a life of conversation 
with earth, and a life whose conversation is in heaven. And 
so, too, there are two deaths possible to man. For death is 



THE PUBE IN HEART, 271 

the ceasing of those processes and sensations, by which any- 
living thing keeps its vital connection with the system of 
things in which it lives. And so, while the mind lives inex- 
tinguishable, except by the word of the Creator, it may pass 
one death by the dissolution of that organism by which it 
associates with the material earth; it may suffer another 
death by the fatal derangement of those sensibilities and per- 
ceptions given it to maintain its communion on high. This 
is the second death, the outer darkness of the blinded soul, 
the deathless worm of the incurable spiritual essence. 

It is, then, with the eye of the spirit that we are to see 
God; and mark the expression, ^ ^ the pure in heart shall see 
God." Not that they may feel after Him and find Him, not 
that they shall hear Him, not that some joyful taste or savor 
shall indicate His presence, but they shall see Him. He 
shall be present to the most ready, spontaneous and happy 
sense of which man has any knowledge — that sense which 
presents to us at one glance the full form in all its grace or 
majesty of proportion and attitude, its beauty of complexion 
and comeliness of attire, and all so easily and so fully, that 
the figure carries the idea of the most immediate and perfect 
revelation of Deity to the soul; not by any laborious process 
of search and inference, but as a vivid reality plainly present 
before it, a clear perception coming in the repose of the soul, 
coming as the sunlight comes into the clear eye; it will pre- 
sent its picture, unless the eye be closed against it. Surely 
thus to see God must be a blessing indeed. And this bless- 
ing Christ says the pure in heart shall enjoy. And His word 
is true — true for this world and true for the world to come. 

The pure in heart shall see God. 

HI. How DO THE Pure in Heart see God? 

Purity of heart is a clearness and cleanness of all the 
spiritual senses and faculties, so that the soul can truly dis- 



272 SEBMONS. 

cern the various suggestions that are continually presented to 
it. This purity produces the two essentials to the soul's 
vision of God, viz. : The disposition and the ability to see 
God. 

Impurity of character does not incline him that cher- 
ishes it to desire the sight of the true God, for He is of 
purer eyes than to behold evil. So it has been ever since 
the first human soul that was conscious of corruption, hid 
among the trees of the garden from the face of Jehovah 
'' because he was naked." " He that doeth evil hateth the 
light; neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be 
reproved." But the pure heart seeks the light and longs to 
come to its fountain. ' ' He that hath clean hands and a pure 
heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn 
deceitfully, this is the generation of them that seek him, that 
seek thy face, O God of Jacob." This world is full of the 
manifestation of God. He displays His power. He illustrates 
His wisdom. He pours forth His bounty. Yet as a general 
thing the witness of God, universal as it is, is unobtrusive. 
'' He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust;" as the stream 
of blessing flows, He that pours it forth remains unseen, 
ready to manifest Himself to them that seek him, yet not 
interrupting the even dignity of His bounty because some of 
His creatures do not have Him in all their thoughts, for He 
is God and not man. And most godlike is the still beauty of 
that gentle persuasion, unceasingly wooing man, whether he 
will hear or whether he will forbear, to come to his God, to 
trust His wisdom and His strength, and to repose upon His love. 
'' He left not himself without witness, in that He did good, 
and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling 
our hearts with food and gladness." The pouring forth such 
bounty is a joy to His benevolence, even as He pours it forth, 
but when the grateful heart is lifted up to God in recogniz- 



THE PTJBE IN HEART. 273 

ing thankfulness, then it sees God, and as it looks and 
listens, behold all is full of beauty^ and that beauty is 
the smile of God; all is full of music, which is the gentle 
voice of God; and all is full of strength and majesty and 
consummate skill, which are features of God; and all this 
presence of God is made manifest to His sons, simply by lift- 
ing that eyelid of self-will, which obstructs the vision of the 
carnal man, and, so discerning and responding, they enter into 
the joy of their Lord. 

But this is not all the truth. The impure heart lacks not 
only the will but the faculty of seeing God. His pure and 
perfect loveliness is shielded from the impure gaze of men by 
a veil, a mist, a film, which overspreads the evil eye, or an 
inner palsy of the nerve, so that God may walk among His 
people but His enemies shall not see Him. The pillar which 
gave light by night to Israel was cloud and darkness to the 
Egyptians. 

And how, again, is this? How is it that the pure in 
heart can see God more clearly and truly than other men? 
Purity of heart is not mental acumen or penetration, and can- 
not more scientific and philosophic men, better than the 
merely pure in heart, analyse the manifestations of God and 
deduce from them the character of the Creator? Oh, no! 
' ' Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings God hath ordained 
praise." ''He hath chosen the foolish things of the world to 
confound the wise." ''The natural man cannot know the 
things of the spirit of God, because they are spiritually dis- 
cerned." All this is no marvel. It is simply according to 
all the analogy of nature. We wish to see God. If we are 
to see Him it must be with a spiritual eye. Now, intellect is 
not eye, either of body or of spirit. John Milton was a 
wonder of learning not less than of genius, but he, at the 
period of his most consummate flowering of mind, could not 
see man, whom the youngest boy in this congregation can 



274 SEEM0N8. 

see without an effort. So Voltaire was a wonder of talent 
and study, but he could not see God; he was blind in soul, 
and so many a little girl, that knows almost nothing else, 
knows what Voltaire, with his philosophy, could not know. 
And what is the philosophy of this ? 

One part of it is that the pure heart is able to understand 
and recognize God. 

No man can understand a feeling such as he never had, 
or a motive which he never felt. The impure heart is con- 
tinually perverting the gifts of God. This scheme of nature, 
so pure and holy in loveliness, in all its multiplicity of ele- 
ments and of operations, is to the impure heart all filled with 
impure associations. '' Unto them that are defiled and unbe- 
lieving is nothing pure," but on the other hand ''to the pure 
all things are pure." And so to the pure heart all things 
manifest the pure God. There are those to whom the very 
Word of God is full of carnal suggestion, but to the pure 
heart ''the words of the Lord are pure words." God's 
"word is very pure, therefore he loves it," and so with the 
visible manifestations of God. There is a suggestion of 
divine purity rising above human guile through all the ob- 
jects of this world, and on high are the pure stars, and they, 
too, suggest a yet higher purity — the purity of Him in whose 
sight the stars are not pure — and so in the contemplation of 
such purity the heart continually purifies itself "even as He is 
pure," and as it grows purer, the pure light flows in more 
purely still, cleansing the heart that it may see Him more and 
more, until at length it shall "behold His face in righteous- 
ness," and "be satisfied, awaking in His likeness." [Ps. 
xvii. 15 ] 

We see spiritual things here as in a glass — in a mirror — 
and we know how entirely the impression of an object so 
viewed depends upon the quality of the glass. A discolored 
glass cannot present a pure white image, and a distorted glass 



THE PUEE IN HEART, 275 

can give none but a distorted image, and therefore they that 
trust to such media can never see God. The mirror, the 
imagination, which is defiled with unclean defacings, cannot 
present any reflection of Him at all, and that which is 
scratched and twisted by the self-willed philosophy of men 
can only render an unseemly caricature of the perfection of 
beauty, which the clean and simple heart sees. 

So man has proved it by experiment, for he has a nature 
which looks for God, and which in its corruption has sup- 
plied its own longings by making to itself gods, that is, by 
trying to embody in some distinct form its conceptions of 
Deity. It makes its gods as Aaron made gods for the chil- 
dren of Israel. It takes the precious gifts of God, with all 
the rich and blessed meaning and suggestion which there is 
in them, and throws them into the fire of its own passion, 
and pours them upon the soil of its own debasement, and fash- 
ions them with the graver of its own crooked thoughts, and 
there comes forth ' ' this calf." All the gods of all paganism are 
presentations of the idea of Deity as rendered by the various 
minds which have attempted to catch and represent it. There 
was the Phoenician religion of the Canaanites — the deifica- 
tion of lust and brutality; the Egyptian worship of the 
brutes themselves, a more humane religion than the Phceni- 
cian, by as much as a real brute is more human than a brutal 
and beastly man. And then there were the Grecian gods, a 
mythology as cold aud superficial in its gracefulness as that 
of Sidon was hot and sanguinary in its hideousness; and the 
Roman gods — fierce, imperious, proud and stern — each made 
in the image of its worshipers. The soul of the Roman 
religion is will; of the Greek, fancy; of the Canaanite, pas- 
sion; but neither presents the true image of God, the per- 
fect in love and grace and justice, because in neither was that 
pure and unbiased state of soul which was prepared to pre- 
sent them all. 



276 SERMONS. 

We have been speaking of God as presented by His works 
of nature and bounties of Providence to the observation and 
gratitude and worship of men. But all these, as we see, are 
but the drapery of our idea of God. The image itself of 
God is the human soul. ''In the image of God made He 
man." And as all this outward world, in its Sabbath loveli- 
ness, is like a still lake reflecting heaven, so the image of 
God Himself is seen in the depths of the human soul, but 
only when that soul is unruffled and clear. A gust of pas- 
sion sweeping over the surface destroys the image, a discol- 
oring of the element perverts it, but the pure human soul, in 
its free and symmetrical and healthful development, is the 
presentation of the character of God. The image is finite in 
proportion, as are our minds which are to grasp it, but still 
it points to the infinity of God, partly by its own power of 
endless expansion, directing our imaginations in the line 
along which they may run toward the Infinite to the utmost 
stretch of imagination, and partly by the fact that the atti- 
tude of such a pure soul is that of continually looking up to 
an Infinite One, in whom are realized the fulness of all those 
perfections of being which the soul longs for, and in whom 
are all those riches of bounty upon which the soul must 
depend, and who is all that the soul worships. 

Here in the depth of the pure soul, then, it is that men are 
to see God. Sir William Herschel wrought for his great 
telescope a speculum of pure and burnished metal, which, 
when duly adjusted, gathered the rays that came from heaven, 
and presented for his study the stars and planets with a dis- 
tinctness and lustre unknown to the naked eye. He descried 
a new planet far off beyond the circuit of Saturn. So God, 
not visible to our mortal eye, may be discerned in the won- 
drous speculum of the pure heart. If the astronomer pointed 
his neighbor to a dark and apparently vacant spot in the sky, 
and told him that in that spot was a great planet, and his 



THE PURE IN HEART. 277 

neighbor should refuse to believe it because he did not see it 
there, he would be like some men who will not believe in 
Deity except on higher external evidence. But suppose the 
astronomer to say further, I see the planet in a plate of metal 
which I have, and the other to go and see if he could see it 
in the plate of his plowshare or his silver table service, and 
seeing it not, should disbelieve it, he would be like some 
other men who do not accept God because they do not find 
His ima^e in their own minds. The fact is that the reflec- 
tion of God is not in the rusty iron of selfish toil, nor in the 
gold which bears the image and superscription of Caesar, but 
in the heart which God hath refined as silver is refined, and 
tried as gold is tried. The astronomer might permit another 
to see the wonders of the sky in his telescope, but not so with 
the spiritual mirror. Each man must keep his own heart 
pure if he would see God, He cannot see the vision of Him 
which is in the soul of another. Yet the man of pure heart 
is in some degree a reflection of God for all the community 
about him. His character as it shines is a likeness of God, 
and men, seeing his good works, glorify his Father which is 
in heaven; or seeing his faith, as the disciples looked into the 
eye of the Only Begotten Son and saw the image of the 
Father there, they may also catch His likeness. 

So in still communion with his own heart the Christian 
sees God. When he hath gone into his closet and shut the 
door, then his mind, resting from the annoyances of toil and 
care and earthly trouble, presents to him the likeness of God 
as clearly and distinctly as the mind itself is at peace and is 
clear of the clouding of sin; and not only does he see God 
there, but if he can preserve that same heavenly composure 
when he goes abroad, the light itself of day may make the image . 
vivid, and the works, which God has made very good, may 
become a fitting frame for it, and the voices and the motions 
of all nature, inanimate, animate and even human, may all 



278 8EBM0N8. 

give expression and life to that view of God which is so full 
of grace and majesty and benignity in the silence of private 
contemplation. 

But to see God as the pure heart sees Him is something 
higher than all this. He is permitted not merely to contem- 
plate God, but to commune with Him. God loves the pure 
heart more than the pure heart loves God, and so God, of His 
special favor, manifests Himself to such an heart. It is not 
merely to look down to unapproachable spiritual depths 
beneath, if we may so say, the placid surface of the soul, 
and there to see a ravishing reflection of the features of 
Deity, a vision for its beauty blessed beyond all human 
thought, but still the image of a God, removed as far above 
us as that image is deep below the surface, even as far above 
the stars as it is purer than they; but God Himself comes 
and dwells in such a soul, and His name is called ''Imman- 
uel" — ^' God with us." 

'' Jesus said. If a man love Me, he will keep my words; and 
my Father will love him, and we will come unto him 
and make our abode with him" (John xiv. 23). And so 
the soul, in the stillness of its secret contemplation, not only 
sees the likeness of God, but it has direct communion with 
God. It has come to the Father of Spirits, to the source of 
all spiritual life, and now it seems at last to live. There 
have been many who, having tasted the joys of such solitary 
communion with God, have deemed a solitary and ascetic life 
the best life for men in this world. And so they have sought 
deserts or monastic cloisters for a purely religious life ; and 
doubtless many and ecstatic have been the enjoyments that 
they have known. Yet that is not the life which God 
intended for men upon this earth. Men may and must com- 
mune much with God in secret, in order that His image and 
His presence may be continually with them, as every true 
earthly friendship must be cherished by private acquaintance. 



THE PURE IN HEART, 279 

But the God of the pure heart does not stay in the closet 
and wait for the visit of the soul there, leaving it to 
go unsustained through the ways of the impure world. 
^' Enoch walked with God." God, if the soul asks his com- 
pany, will go with it through the labors and the business of 
the day. If, however, the soul would have God go with it, 
it must walk in a pure way, ' ' for the ways of the Lord are 
right and the just shall walk in them" (Hos. xiv. 9). 

The need of a pure heart in order to see God was illus- 
trated in the coming of the "Word to the world. ''He was 
in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world 
knew Him not ; He came unto His own and His own received 
Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He 
power to become the sons of God." ''The light shone in 
darkness, but the darkness com})rehended it not." Why? 
'' Because they would not come to the light lest their deeds 
should be reproved;" because "the natural man receiveth 
not the things of the spirit of God ; for they are foolishness 
unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritu- 
ally discerned." Satan "worketh with all deceivableness of 
unrighteousness in them that perish because they received 
not the love of the truth that they might be saved." There- 
fore those things which ' ' prophets and righteous men desired 
to see," the men among whom they were done did not see, 
because their eyes were covered and their ears were stopped 
by the pollution of this world. But the " just and devout" 
Simeon, who was waiting for the consolation of Israel, tarry- 
ing upon the earth until he should see the Lord's Christ, 
when the infant Jesus was brought into the temple, "took 
Him up in his arms and blessed God, and said, ' Lord, now let- 
test Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy 
word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. ' " And when 
He commenced His public mission "the Israelite indeed, in 
whom was no guile," exclaimed, "Rabbi, Thou art the 



280 SEBMONS. 

Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel." To the people in 
general, He was without form or comeliness, and when they 
' ' saw Him there was no beauty that they should desire Him. " 
But to those whose eyes were open, like the pure-hearted 
John, He was revealed, '' the Word dwelling among them," 
*'and they beheld His glory — the glory as of the only begot- 
ten of the Father, full of grace and truth;" for the pure heart 
is able to discern heavenly beauty and truth because itself is 
lovely and true ; and in proportion to the purity of their own 
hearts were they able to discern His true character, while He 
was with them ; and after He had gone, and sent the Spirit to 
sanctify them and to lead them into all truth, " the Spirit 
took of the things of Christ and showed them unto them." 
How did He make that manifestation ? It was only 
necessary to purify the heart, so that they might recall and 
spiritually discern the meaning of the words which Christ 
had left in their memories, as within our own day a likeness 
of an old Italian artist has been brought to light simply by 
removing a coating which had been plastered over it. To 
take perhaps a more accurate comparison, we have an art, in 
which a clean and burnished silvered plate, after a peculiar 
preparation, is placed in the camera and receives the image 
of a human countenance. Thus only the hearts which God 
had cleansed and prepared were able to receive the Divine 
lineaments of the Savior's character. Again, the silvered 
plate, after receiving the impression, must be exposed to the 
vapor of mercury in order to make the image visible; so must 
the Spirit breathe upon the soul that has seen God, in order 
that the Divine likeness may become manifest. Thus He takes 
the things of Christ and shows them to man ; and still fur- 
ther, now that we are upon this illustration, the plate must 
be exj)Osed to yet another chemical washing in order to 
cleanse away all the film, which is not covered by the image, 
and to render it permanent. So must the followers of Christ 



THE PJJBE IN HEART. 281 

be baptised with the baptism which He was baptised with — 
the baptism of fire, as well as of the Holy Ghost — which shall 
thoroughly purge away all the dross and take away all the 
tin, so that Christ may be revealed in them, and the image 
made enduring even in all the mingling of the soul in the 
unholy world. 

By such a continual and varied process of purification 
must the image of God be brought out and fixed in the soul. 
Thus, too, it was altogether natural that the apostles, as they 
were sanctified by the Spirit, should turn back with a fresh, 
wondering love to that vision of God manifest in the flesh, 
which had gone about with them in the years of their young 
manhood, when their eyes were so holden that they could not 
fiee Him; and as they remembered, after He had vanished 
out of their sight, how unaccountably their hearts did burn 
within them as He v/alked with them by the way and opened 
to them the Scriptures: how their ripened hearts must have 
longed for a renewal of such heavenly intercourse now that 
their hearts were better prepared to '' know Him." 

Their longing was to see Christ again. Nor was it a vain 
longing in them, nor is it in us. It was a sure hope, and this 
shall be the last and most blessed topic in our present con- 
sideration. 

The pure in heart shall see God hereafter. '' We know," 
saith John, *' that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, 
for we shall see Him as He is." 

Such a blessedness and crown of rejoicing did the apostles 
of om* Lord anticipate as laid up for them, and not for them 
only, but for ' < all them also that love His appearing " (II 
Tim. iv. 8). 

But still they bore in mind and they call upon us to bear 
in mind always the condition, the only condition of the real- 
ization of such a hope. '' Every man that hath this hope in 
him purifieth himself even as He is pure." 



283 SERM0N8. 

Into that city of our God *' there shall in no wise enter any- 
thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination 
or maketh a lie." 

They that are before that throne cease not day nor night 
crying ''Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty." If we 
walk in the light the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from 
^'all sin." Then ''our conversation is in heaven, from 
whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 
who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like 
unto His glorious body." 

"He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he 
that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands 
from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing 
of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil — thine eyes 
shall see the King in His beauty " — no more veiled in mortal 
flesh, no more hidden from us by our own dimness of vision 
by reason of sin, but as He is, in all the pure glory of His 
infinite loveliness. "How great is His goodness and how 
great is His beauty ! " And there is something mysterious to 
the reason, yet self-evident to the spirit, in the effect of such 
a vision of the perfection of positive beauty by the perfectly 
clean heart. " We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him 
as He is." It would seem that the attractiveness and the 
spiritual power of such a vision will transform the soul, that 
the pure heart in such a presence shall fear and be enlarged, 
and as it shall see, shall flow together and, as it were, merge 
itself in that infinite blessedness, and so repose in the bosom 
of its Lord forever. 

"As for me," saith the sweet singer of Israel, "I shall 
behold Thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when 
I awake, with Thy likeness." 



IX. 

THE BELIEVER'S REST. 



The Believer's Rest. 

Hebrews iv. 3. 
For we which have believed do enter into rest. 

This is the testimony of a believer to the fulfillment of 
the promise of the Savior; <' Come unto me all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." These are 
words which have been fulfilling themselves ever since the 
day when the Savior spoke them. The assurance of the sym- 
pathy of Jesus the Christ does of itself breathe through the 
soul the rest which it promises. It is aS;, when David played 
before King Saul, the very music of his harp, even without 
the words of the song, had power to charm away the evil 
spirit from the frenzied mind of the king. Even so in the 
griefs and burdens which fall upon us here, the soul, receiv- 
ing this assurance of its Lord, does not stop to ask any fur- 
ther question, to inquire what medicine He has for a mind 
diseased, what strong arm He has to lift its burden. The 
mere assurance of the Savior's sympathy is in itself healing 
to the wounded, and strength to the fainting soul. 

In that sympathy itself the soul recognizes its strong de- 
liverer, as well as its tender lover. It recognizes these words 
as the words of God, because it feels them breathing through 
the depths of the soul, as only He that made the soul could 
affect it. So instinctively the believer receives the peace and 
comfort and assured truth of that saying, and the instinct, 
which receives them and the healing which they bring is the 
proof of that truth. It brings peace and strength to the 
heart, as medicine for the body soothes its fever or restores 

285 



^86 SEBMONS. 

its vigor, by a process which our own study or worry cannot 
help, but may hinder or destroy. 

And yet there is a wisdom of God in it all, which He 
would have us discern and love. He would have us see by 
whom and how the burden is lifted from the weary soul. 

We recognize this relieving of our burdens as a truly 
divine office. Isaiah, in the midst of the sublimity of his 
prophecy, exclaims, '*The Lord God hath given me the 
tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a 
word in season to him that is weary," and the sentiment fills 
the splendor of his poetry with the warmth of genial life. 
Blessed, indeed, is that learning which hath such an end! 
Blessed, beyond all the proud achievements of the human 
intellect, that word in season to the weary! We will receive 
it as the word of God. 

The Word, which was made flesh, stands before us pro- 
fessing to give this rest to all the weary and the heavy laden. 

Let us consider w^hat were and are some of the burdens 
with which the world was weary when Christ came, and with 
which it is now weary. And let us try to see whether Christ 
gives rest from those burdens. 

The context seems to suggest what we should perhaps 
have thought of early in our inquiry, namely, 

A BURDEN OF DARKNESS AND POUBT. 

The soul is lost in a wilderness, not knowing God and not 
knowing itself, doubting whether itself is mortal or immor- 
tal, a living soul for the time inhabiting and ruling a frail 
body, or a mere bundle of fleshy tissues secreting thought 
as they secrete blood; doubting whether this world and all the 
stars are mere balls of dead matter reeling through blank 
space, or whether they all declare the glory of a God. 

The mind might answer for itself some of these doubts, 
and it did answer them. ^«For the invisible things of Him 



THE BELIE VE IV S REST. 287 

from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under- 
stood by the things that are made, even His eternal power 
and Godhead. " 

But still all this impression of eternal power and God- 
head does not give to the soul that light which is the life of 
men. The presence of this awful power may crush the soul 
with a new burden, but it does not give it rest. It still 
groans for another idea of God. And so the world, by its 
wisdom, still sought for God and found him not. For He 
was not to be found by the study of the wise. 

It seems as if we might have known as much as that; 
known that of course the mind of man could not grasp the 
being of the Creator, that whatsoever man could know of 
God must come in such a shape that it could be discerned by 
the most ignorant soul that was willing to know God, as well 
as by the most learned. 

And yet we labor with these doubts; not heathen men, 
alone, but Christian men are oppressed by them. Our minds 
try to grasp great problems respecting God and man, and 
when our ambition has attempted something too great for our 
powers, we reel under the burden, and we fall into doubt or 
unbelief, and there lies the poor pride of the philosopher, 
blessing, while it despises, the simple faith of the child or 
of the slave. In a world thus oppressed with doubt, stands 
Jesus, as in the passage from which the promise is taken, say- 
ing, <* I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
prudent and hast revealed them unto babes; even so. Father, 
for so it seemed good in Thy sight. AH things are delivered 
unto Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the Son but 
the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. Come 
unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for 



288 SEBMONS. 

I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls; for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." 

'' The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
ment showeth His handiwork." And yet, the evidence of 
these stupendous works and operations of God is rather 
overwhelming than satisfying to the mind. Man cannot 
bear such a pressure of God without him, unless he has a 
living power of God within him. And so the heathen mind, 
whether in pagan or Christian lands, '' being alienated from 
the life of God," has never been able to know God, or to 
escape from the burden, the oppression, of the thought of 
God, except by a kind of wilful suppression of its own 
instincts. 

A poet of their own has expressed the state of mind of such 
unbelievers with rare honesty. Horace says: ''To wonder 
at nothing is well nigh the one and only thing which can 
make or keep you happy. Men there are who can look upon 
this sun and the stars, and the solemn movements of the 
heavens, and not be filled with awe and fear." Oh, what pity, 
that a man with a soul made to be moved by the movements of 
the heavens should find no way of entering into rest except by 
stupefying his own nature, so that he can gaze upon all this 
testimony of God with a stolid unbelief! And then that he 
should call this stupidity happiness! 

And yet, what should a man do? True it is that all this 
stupendous movement passes over us in the firmament of day 
and of night; presses around us in the changes of the sea- 
sons, and in the strength and life of nature; passes through 
us in the operation of the laws of our own life; passes like 
the equipage of a monarch. As our minds view it and feel 
it, what can we do but fall down and adore? Surely a man, 
in whom the senses of man are alive^ can do nothing less. 
And yet a man, in whom is the soul of a man, can hardly do 
that, can hardly worship unless he can do more. It is not 



THE BELIEVER'S REST. 289 

life to the body for a Hindoo to fall down and let the car of 
Juggernaut roll over him. Nor is it life to the soul to pros- 
trate itself under a sense of the overpowering greatness of 
the God who moves before us in the grandeur of the Lord 
of heaven and earth. And yet, there is a knowledge of God 
which is life eternal to the soul. But the soul cannot accept, 
though it fears to reject, this awful majesty and might as its 
God. For it needs and must have a God who exists for 
some other purpose than merely to be wondered at or to be 
dreaded. It seems a high thing to say that a Being which 
could fill all the visible heavens and earth might yet be insuf- 
ficient to fill the soul of man. And yet, the soul of man 
has been so made, that so high a thing as that is simply 
true. 

Neither does the soul quite feel that it has found its 
God, when we add the proofs of benevolence with which He 
has filled His universe. It may be full of awe, and full of 
admiration, and yet, it does not feel that it knows God. 

It is like a poor slave looking upon the state of an earthly 
emperor. As the splendor of his train goes by, the poor man 
looks up from his weary labor, with wonder and awe, per- 
haps with fear. If he knows that the king is good he may 
admire. But still he does not feel that he knows the king, 
and his sense of his own burdens is made more oppressive by 
the sight of the grandeur which is so near him and yet so far 
from him. Let the poor man know that it is by the wisdom 
and goodness of the king that he enjoys the security of law 
and the various blessings, countless, after all, and inestimable, 
which belong to him, as even a poor subject of a good king, 
and he comes to feel drawn to the monarch. He has recog- 
nized now a greatness and nobility, a kingliness of another 
sort from that pomp and parade. He recognizes him as a 
king, indeed, by this token, that with a wise and strong and 
kind sympathy he relieves the burdens of his people. He 



390 SERMONS, 

feels that the great man is not only king over him, but that 
he is his king. It is the idea which the French had, when 
they deposed a ^'King of France" and installed a ''King of 
the French;" such as old Homer had when he called the king 
the '' Shepherd of the People." When we see these tokens, 
the kingly power and the kingly care, all know an earthly 
king of men. We do not demand in him, the earthly king, 
the capacity to know or to do all things, or to relieve, or even 
to think of, all our burdens. We accept him with the limi- 
tations of humanity, and we give him such respect and love 
as he may earn. 

But the soul must know something more than this before 
it can know God. It may see and feel His eternal power and 
Godhead, but as we have seen and felt, all that kind of dis- 
cernment of God leaves its personal demand for God only 
more oppressive than before. The God whom man seeks is 
not so much a power and an intelligence, as a heart and a soul. 
Might, wisdom, even general administrative justice and 
benevolence, are all essential attributes of the Godhead, and 
yet, even by them all, the soul will not and cannot know 
God — that ''true God, to know whom is eternal life." 

The soul wants the personal sympathy of God. 

That poor man would not think of asking the emperor to 
leave his splendor and his affairs of state, and to come to his 
poor hut and inquire after his personal distresses. For an 
emperor is but a man, and cannot attend to little things and 
great things at once. All his action is in a little circle. 
There are countless things too high for him, and countless 
things too delicate for him. But God must be free from all 
these limitations, and we can know God only by that proof — 
by discerning that he is perfectly all which we ask for in a 
perfect Lord and King. We see the power, the wisdom, the 
justice, and even the general benevolence, and we fear and 
admire, but still we do not know Him. God does not yet enter 



THE BELIEVER'S BEST. 291 

into the circle of our personal acquaintance, and if He is God 
He must come into that circle. For me, the soul will say, 
the center of the universe is in the center of my own soul. 
So God has made me, and my God must be a God who has 
his throne in the center of my soul and from that center rules 
all the world. He must be a God who feels all my griefs 
sooner and more deeply than I can feel them, who will rejoice 
in my joy, as this poor soul of mine cannot rejoice — one who 
causeth all things to '' work together for good to them that 
love Him." jS^othing less than that can satisfy the soul of 
man. It is a high demand for a feeble creature. And yet 
this very feebleness is the energy of the demand. It is the 
great want of the babe, which is exactly the strongest natural 
thing on this earth, which God made that he might ordain 
praise and strength in this lower world. 

Philip saith unto Him: ''Lord, show us the Father 
and it sufficeth us." And Philip speaks for us all. Man 
doubts not so much from want of evidence of the being or 
of the greatness or goodness of God, but rather because 
we do not feel and see Him in that near and tender per- 
sonal relation in which we feel that God must be near to 
us, if there is a God at all for us. We want one whom 
we can know as our own Father, as well as our God — as 
a Father not only nearer to us than any human king, but 
even than any human father — the Father, the perfection of 
that ideal which the mind has of fatherly care, yes, one nearer 
to us and loving us more tenderly, wisely and efficiently 
than father or mother, one nearer to us than we are to our- 
selves. That is what we want, in order that we may feel 
that we know God. ''Lord, show us the Father and it suf- 
ficeth us." 

And what is the answer of the Word to Philip? "He 
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. " And again (John 
i. 18) : "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten 



292 SERMONS, 

Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared 
Him." And how hath He declared Him? Simply by coming 
and adding that element to our thought and experience of 
God which can make all clear and transparent to us. 

In Christ, God presents Himself to our personal and indi- 
vidual acquaintance and sympathy. The train of the King of 
kings stops before the door of the poor man; the chariot of 
glory is opened, and forth steps He to whom '^all power is 
given in heaven and in earth. " He has laid His glory by; He 
comes in the form of a servant. He takes the hand of the 
poor man. He looks in his eye, and He saith, ''Come unto me 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek 
and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, for 
my yoke is easy and my burden is light." 

"This," the soul must cry that has come to feel its want 
of God, ' ' this is God. All that splendor and might was the 
hiding of God. But this voice which speaks to my inmost 
soul, this is the voice of God. And so I know there is a 
God, and God is near me and He loves me; before the foun- 
dation of the world He prepared salvation for me, and now, 
in the person of His Son, he passes before me bearing my 
cross, and surely it is a light and a blessed thing that I may 
take His cross and bear it after Him." 

And, behold! upon the instant, every burden of all that 
labor and are heavy laden has become light. Rest has filled 
the soul; not that negative rest, which is a mere removing 
of the load from shoulders that are still feeble, and a mind 
still imbecile, but that positive and living rest, which arises 
when the strength of God comes and fills the soul, and the 
doing of His commandments becomes a joyful play of the 
spirit. As one hath said, I John v. 3,4,5: '' This is the love 
of God, that we keep His commandments, and His command- 
ments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God 



THE BELIEVER'S BEST, 293 

overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcom- 
eth the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh 
the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" 

There is the secret of victory over all ' ' the ills that 
flesh is heir to." It lies in receiving with all the mind and 
heart the knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, of 
God as our God, sympathizing in all our sorrows as well as 
our joys, and through them all, and through His bearing 
them all for us, working out a great salvation for us. 

" What shall we, then, say to these things? ''If God be 
for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own 
Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also 
with Him freely give us all things? " ' ' Who shall separate us 
from the love of Christ? " 

We shall not, however, get the full force of the manifesta- 
tion of God in the lowly love of Christ unless we observe the 
dignity of the King of kings as it still appears under the garb 
of a servant, and come to feel how, as an earthly king puts 
on splendor to cover his own feebleness, so the heavenly King 
lays off His splendor to reveal His eternal glory. 

The sovereign God is sovereign still, even in the richest 
freedom of His mercies. ''I praise thee. Lord of heaven 
and earth, because thou has hid these things from the wise 
and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so. 
Father, for so it hath seemed good in thy sight." There is 
the sovereign bounty of a king. Herod and the Scribes knew 
not the child Christ, but to the wise men of the East and to 
the shepherds of Bethlehem He was revealed by the star and 
the angels. And further on, ''Neither knoweth any man the 
Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to 
reveal Him. " It is all of His own free grace. 

And shall we, therefore, turn away, broken in heart, 
because this life which has come so near us is, after all, not 
for us? No, not yet. For hear what it is that He saith: 



294 SERMONS. 

' ' Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he 
to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him," and he 
goes right on to say, ^ ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Thus is the pub- 
lishing of the decree of the Sovereign. If we are weary, if 
we are heavy laden, then He will give us rest. 

If there be any that are not weary or heavy laden, if 
there be any who, being weary and heavy laden, still will not 
come to the Savior of mankind, to them He will not give rest. 

Who will stay away and bear his burden alone? 

Who will come to the Meek and Lowly in heart and find 
the rest of the soul, the ''peace in believing," ''the peace 
of God which passeth all understanding, keeping the heart 
and mind in Christ Jesus " ? 



THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT 



The Communion of the Spirit. 

John xiv. 16. 

And I will pray the Father, and He shall ^Ive you another Comforter, 
that He may abide with you forever. 

Here we have the first distinct revelation of the Holy- 
Spirit as a personal helper, coming from the Father, by the 
prayer of the Son, to comfort the souls of His children. 
Christ has reserved this revelation for the hour of sorrow 
when it would be needed. Judas has gone out to betray his 
Lord. Jesus is alone with the eleven. Bereavement, danger, 
sore temptation are before them. They know a little of it, 
and sorrow fills their heart. He knows it all and sympathy 
fills His heart. And to prepare them not only for what they 
foresaw, but for what He foresaw, He announces to them that 
^'promise of the Father," that best gift for men, which He 
was to receive when He had '' led captivity captive. " That 
gift should be another and an everlasting Comforter, a Spirit 
of truth, dwelling with them and being in them. 

It is only a clearer statement of a fact in the Divine and 
human constitution and the Plan of Redemption, which is 
often recognized in the word of God. 

Man was made for spiritual communion. His spirit in- 
clines to seek it, as the hart pants for water brooks. All 
ancient and heathen polytheism, and all modern and infidel 
necromancy are tokens, or perversions of this instinct of man 
which God made in order that the soul might seek for God. 
God sends us His Word to call us to the one fountain of living 
waters, to the one spirit of life, to that communion which is 
opened for us by the death and the prayer of the Son of God. 

297 



298 SERMONS. 

We have presented to us a most blessed subject for con- 
templation in the light of God's word, 

The Communion of the Holy Ghost with Man. 

These are wonderful words. It is a wonderful thought that 
the Holy Spirit of God will converse with men; that we, who 
are but dust and ashes, may speak to God, and that God will 
hear us. Even when we have sinned we may come to Him 
and He will give us answers of peace. How blessed that 
record of Enoch! ^^ Enoch walked with God! " That beauti- 
ful and holy companionship, in the midst of those wicked 
generations of giants! And so, too, even we may walk with 
Him in white, and we may open to Him the doors of these 
poor, shattered, impoverished hearts of ours, and He will 
come in with His riches of love and riches of bounty, and 
will sup with us as we with Him. 

But these thoughts are so rapturous that we are in danger 
of forgetting to take of those riches of fuller revelation of 
God's counsels toward us, which lie in His word, still invit- 
ing us to feed our minds with them, as the angel urged Elijah 
again to take meat before he went on to the mount of God* 
We will study, then, what is the communion of the Holy 
Ghost to which the Lord calls us. 

If we confine ourselves to the clear teachings of the word 
of God, we must speak of the communion of the Holy Ghost 
with regenerate men. We do not say that the unregenerate 
heart stands in no relation to the Spirit. God said before the 
flood, '' My spirit shall not always strive with man." " No 
man," saith Christ, ^'can come unto me except the Father 
which sent me draw him." There is a continual persuasion 
of the word and works of God; of His providential dealings, 
and of the conscience which he has implanted, and we know 
not of what other influence of our Father, to lead us to come to 



THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT. 299 

Christ. But we do not find this called the communion of the 
Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost is the most mysterious, secret, 
and as one might say, delicate, manifestation of Deity. God 
the Father in the grand and everywhere manifest dignity of 
His greatness and goodness and truth, sendeth rain on the 
evil and on the good. He does not leave Himself without 
witness. Christ saith, " No man can come to me except the 
Father which hath sent me draw him. " God the Son could 
come and die for us while we were yet sinners, and He says, 
' ' No man cometh unto the Father but by me. " But the Holy 
Ghost is that peculiar manifestatiou of God, which speaks to 
them that dwell in the secret place of the Almighty. 

It would seem that the Spirit stands at the door of the 
heart, waiting with yearning love for the heart to be 
opened, waiting till Its holy influence shall be sought, and 
then, when the doors are opened, coming in and renewing 
the soul, sometimes pervading it with a sudden and unspeak- 
able joy, or, when It sees that that will be better, diffusing a 
purifying influence in silent or even sad blessing, like the 
rain, which clouds weep upon the mown grass and like 
showers that water the earth. 

The communion, then, of the Holy Ghost with the Chris- 
tian, begins with the act of regeneration. 

The soul of man is brought by the drawing of the Father's 
love to the Son; and then the sympathy of the Son leads it to 
the Father again, as our Father, and then ' ' the love of God 
is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given 
unto us;" and we receive the spirit of adoption whereby 
we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with 
our Spirit that we are children of God. By a supernatural 
influence, a new life is created in the heart, a life of holiness, 
life eternal. ''Except a man be born of the Spirit he cannot 
enter into the kingdom of God." This birth is not an event 
which our philosophy can comprehend, but its effects we can 



300 SEBMONS. 

see and feel, standing still and seeing the salvation of God. 
It is not "\)j works of righteousness that we have done, but 
according to His mercy he saveth us by the washing of re- 
generation and renewing of the Holy Ghost." It is a curious 
question of speculation, and a stumbling block of some un- 
regenerate hearts, to ask whether man is not capable of 
renewing his own heart. But it is not a question which a 
pious heart raises. Even if it be so, that it could have 
turned itself from sin to holiness, it is well pleased that such 
was not the fact in its own history. It is so much sweeter 
and better for the soul to have thrown itself into the arms of 
the Holy Spirit of God, and to have been renewed by Its com- 
munion, to feel that tie of holy gratitude and love binding us 
to that blessed Spirit, so that " God may be all in all" and 
that we may be clothed only in His righteousness. 

The work of the Spirit does not end with the new birth. 
But thenceforth we are sons, dwelling in the house forever; 
and this Holy Comforter abideth with us forever. Earthly 
friendships, however sweet, carry with them always an un- 
defined disquiet in the consciousness that they are transient; 
but the communion with this Holy Friend reaches from the 
moment of conversion to the end of eternity. He will freely 
sympathize and aid in every holy thought and right endeavor 
through all that duration. In every vicissitude of that end- 
less and boundless being He wall be the Helper which the 
soul needs. How dismal it would be, to be an immortal 
soul doomed to wander without foresight or plan or support 
through eternity, a soul lost in the great desert expanses of 
infinite Sf)ace; but, on the other hand, how happy to be a 
soul led through such immensity by the life-giving com- 
panionship of the Spirit of Holiness which blesses it all; to be 
children forever of the house of the Lord of this blessedness; 
and to have the Holy Spirit of our God continually witnessing 
wdth our spirits that we are children of God. So forever 



THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT. 301 

will this true Spirit abide and walk with us. The new life 
given at regeneration is but the beginning of blessings which 
He will impart daily and hourly; it is only the first of those 
gifts for men, which He, who led captivity captive and as- 
cended up on high, hath received, and which are embraced in 
that one unspeakable gift of the Comforter, the Spirit of 
Truth, the Sanctifier. He is a Divine Companion to whom the 
new-born soul looks up with the trusting love of an infant in 
the first beginning of its spiritual life, when it looks up also to 
almost all about it; but it will look up to Him with far 
more lowly and childlike reverence, as well as with more fer- 
vent and clinging love, when it shall have become greater 
than a seraph; and for every want of the seraph, as well as of 
the infant soul, will the bounty of that one Spirit more than 
suffice. Our communion with Him may be like an unending 
happiness of childhood, led from blessing to blessing with an 
ever fresh and elastic enjoyment. 

But neither can we tarry upon so attractive an anticipa- 
tion as that of the light-hearted but pure rapture of the 
young Christian spirit, renewed and made everlasting in that 
world of spirits made perfect, in whom the joyousness of 
childhood shall blend forever with the vigor of youth and the 
wisdom of age, and the communion of the Spirit of God shall 
be the richness and the glory of them all. 

We will inquire further of the offices of the Spirit in this 
earthly life. 

He is the Comforter. 

As such Christ continually designates Him in His last 
conversation Avith the sorrowing disciples. That we may at- 
tain to some idea of the value of His comforting, read the 
words of Christ, '' Because I have said these things unto you, 
sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the 
truth; it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go 
not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I 



'302 . SERMONS. 

depart, I will send Him unto you." He saith also that this 
Comforter *' shall abide with you forever." 

He is forever with us — a Comforter so precious that it 
was gain, even for those chosen twelve that had of all the 
race of men enjoyed the personal intimacy of the Son of God, 
to suffer the sorrow of the loss of their Lord that they might 
enjoy that comforting. It seems wonderful tons; yet when 
we remember that their intercourse with Jesus was through 
the bodily senses, while the communion of the Spirit is an 
immediate contact and mingling of soul with soul, we may 
see that it must have a truth beyond all our thoughts. And 
that same Comforter still continues. ' ' Blessed, " saith He that 
Tsent the Comforter, ' ' Blessed are they that mourn, for they 
shall be comforted." There is a happiness, often full and 
rich and seeming to fill all the capacity of a mortal, in some 
of the attachments of this earth; and when the object which 
had so filled the heart is taken away, the void that is left seems 
incurable. Yet even an earthly friend, coming then, may 
speak words of comfort ; and if the heart has the Holy Spirit 
for its friend and seeks His consolation, He will come and fill 
all that void with His divine sympathy ; yea, and enlarge the 
heart and fill it still with comfort; and in the sense of the pres- 
ence of so dear a Comforter, we love not less the friend that is 
gone, but we do love to welcome to the desolate heart the 
love to which the friend has gone. So tenderly and kindly 
<' as one whom his mother comforteth," doth God comfort 
His people. But it is not only in the mighty sorrows, 
which overwhelm the soul and move the sympathy of those 
about us, that the sympathy of the Spirit sustains us. We 
may ''walk in the comfort of the Holy Ghost." This life is 
full of little disquietudes, distresses and disappointments, and 
of those ''own bitternesses " which the heart itself knows. 
These troubles are often of no little weight upon our hearts, 
but we cannot tell them to other men, or, if we did, perhaps 



THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIEIT. 303 

they would despise them. Human spirits are of too coarse a 
texture to recognize the sense of those small but sometimes 
sharp griefs, which may be agony in a particular frame of 
some particular heart. But there is a sympathizing Spirit, 
which, while it is strong enough to sustain the soul under the 
most crushing affliction, is still delicate enough to administer 
the oil of kind consolation in cases where no other sympathy 
would know how to come. ''He knoweth our frame — He 
remembereth that we are dust." Our greatest sorrows are 
trivial compared with the greatness of His nature ; our least 
vexations are important in His all-pervading sympathy. So 
assiduously, by means of all our infantile griefs, does He knit 
our hearts to His, and when the grief is forgotten the tie 
abides forever. 

The Spirit is not less a comforter that He is not seen. 
For in this, as in all His operations. He is not con- 
fined, as men are, to the cumbrous and imperfect media 
by which we communicate feeling. But He mingles freely 
with our emotions themselves, even in their first rising, and 
almost before ourselves are conscious of them ; as every grief 
or joy may go down more deeply into the soul, the com- 
munion of the Spirit accompanies it, and there abides a happy 
savor of His presence — a remembrance of rich, peaceful emo- 
tions, which He inspired, which will be a perpetual comfort. 

The Holy Ghost is also, 
The Instructor of Those with Whom He Communes. 

He is the Spirit of truth as well as of comfort. Christ 
saith: ''I will pray the Father and He shall give you 
another Comforter — even the Spirit of Truth;" and again, 
'' the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father 
will send in my name. He shall teach you all things and bring 
all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto 
you;" and still again, " when the Comforter is come, even the 
Spirit of Truth, He shall testify of me;" and again, "when 



804 * SERMONS, 



He, the Spirit of Truth, is corne. He will guide you into all 
truth; for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He 
shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show things to 



come." 



The Spirit, then, is to be our teacher. But how ? Not, 
as it would seem, by bringing to us new objective facts of 
the unseen world, but He is to take of the things of Christ 
and show them unto us ; He is to bring all things to our 
remembrance. His work is in our own minds, to make theiu 
clear to discern those things which are spiritually discerned. 
He is to " open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things 
out of God's law." The soul enlightened by God's spirit is 
as one whose eyes are opened, so that he sees and understands 
God in His works and in His word. In this there is nothing 
unphilosophical or foreign to the ordinary duty of an 
instructor. It is but half the duty of a teacher to place the 
truth before his pupils. He must incite them to desire it; 
he must, by all means in his power, help them to fix their 
minds upon it, and to keep and make their minds vigor- 
ous and clear for the apprehension of it. But in all the teach- 
ing of human minds by human minds this is the most difficult 
and discouraging part of the process. We may call another 
mind to go with us in the unfolding of a truth of science, and 
so we run on, and the principle spreads itself in beautiful har- 
mony before our minds, and we turn to see if our companion 
is delighted with it as we are; but his eye is like lead — 
vacancy looking into opacity, and we feel as if we had done 
a wrong to the bright truth. But the methods by which the 
Holy Spirit instructs are not so vain and mocking. He can 
come into the mind and soul itself and remove the incapacity 
there which excluded the truth. He does not labor all day 
long to show God to an unclean heart, but He makes the heart 
pure and then it sees God. And so the Spirit passes on in Its 
work, continually cleansing the heart and inciting it to long 



THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIMIT. 305 

for the sight of God, and God continually reveals Himself, 
and the cleansed heart rejoices in the sight, and the Spirit 
rejoices with it, and so with the joy of the Holy Ghost it 
receives the word of the Lord. The Spirit enlarges the heart 
and it runs in the way of God's commandments. 

Nearly allied to this enlightening and illuminating influ- 
ence of the Spirit is what we may call, 

The Inspieation of the Holy Ghost. 

By this we mean that working of the Spirit by which He 
breathes into us those desires, those aspirations by which the 
mind is borne aloft to heavenly things. He produces the 
tempers of mind which are needful for our preparation for the 
gifts, which God is more ready to give than we to ask them. He 
shows us the poverty of our spirits, and says '^ Blessed are the 
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." He teaches us 
to be meek, and says ^'the meek shall inherit the earth." He 
incites to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and says 
' ' blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness for they shall be filled." Mark that — ''filled with right- 
eousness " ! they shall be holy even as He is holy ! He teaches 
us to be kind, and says " blessed are the merciful, for they 
shall obtain mercy," and we shall all need mercy. 

But beyond and above all these specific blessings which 
we can name, y>^e all feel that there is a higher and purer gift 
— a state of blessedness beyond the sight of the eye or the 
hearing of the ear, ' 'which God hath prepared for them that 
love Him." We know not what that glory shall be. But 
we feel that it is our chief want, and so we groan within our- 
selves waiting for that full adoption, which shall make us 
fully "Sons of God." But how shall we ask for it? "We 
know not what to pray for as we ought." Our desires are 
ready to sink back again. But here, too, the Spirit helpeth 
our infirmity, inciting us still to cry unto God and inspiring 



306 SERMONS, 

in us that petition of the poor, hungering and thirsting soul, 
which knows its want, but does not know its supply, and so 
it cries to God with inarticulate groans for His own gift, and 
God, who knoweth the meaning of the Spirit, and what it is 
that will fill that longing which the Spirit hath inspired, shall 
supply our want. We ''shall awake in His likeness and be 
satisfied." 

But the instruction of the Spirit has a higher aim than 
the mere imparting of truth. 

He is to Sanctify Us through the Truth. 

''This is the will of God, even your sanctifica- 
tion." "God hath chosen you to salvation through 
sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth." This 
sanctification, this ' ' perfecting holiness in the fear of the 
Lord," is the end of all God's work with men. For that end 
Christ came and shed His blood, that His ' ' blood might 
cleanse us from all sin, "that by that blood of the covenant we 
might be sanctified. The same is the main use of truth in 
the mind of man — that through it he may be made true, may 
be sanctified — and so Christ prays to His Father after the 
Supper: " Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy word is 
truth," and again, "for this cause I sanctify myself that they 
also might be sanctified through the truth." And this same end 
of making us holy is the labor of the Spirit in all His 
communing with us. He is himself called not only the 
Comforter and the Spirit of Truth, but most especially is He 
called the "Holy Spirit" the " Holy Ghost," and all His 
intercourse with us is holy intercourse. If we go into any 
unhallowed ways He will not go with us. The Holy Spirit 
is " hidden from us." But in all His operation, if He teaches 
us, it is that the holy truth may sanctify us; if He incites, it is 
to holy thoughts and endeavors; if He comforts, it is with 
holy consolation, telling of that pure abode, where God 



THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIBIT. 307 

Himself shall wipe all tears from their eyes — telling of the 
Father of the fatherless and the God of the widow. He 
always suggests holy thoughts, and a holy thought is in itself 
a thought of instruction and of comfort. For the mind 
dwelling holily upon holy things, is in the proper action of 
mind, and that action is its blessedness. 

Such is the communion of the Holy Ghost. A Divine 
Spirit, a person of the Godhead, since Christ has died, 
abides continually with believers upon this earth, to comfort, 
to instruct and to sanctify them. He becomes the com- 
panion of their joy and of their sorrow, mingling His 
spirit with theirs, and leading them on with Him in the holy 
thoughts and emotions of which they may be capable. 
Wherever there is a single Christian heart, that heart is a 
dwelling place of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost has 
been invited to take up His abode there, and has accepted 
the invitation, with its pledge that that soul will commune 
with Him. Thus hath He committed Him to that human 
soul, and come with His riches of spiritual blessing. How 
does it become men to receive such a guest? How in fact 
do men receive Him? 

Brethren, grieve not the Spirit, that Spirit of Truth, which 
comes to instruct you, that Comforter, that Holy Spirit, by 
which ye are sanctified. But seek His companionship; 
draw near to Him. The communion of the Holy Ghost is the 
spiritual communion for which men were made. Christ died 
that we might enjoy it, and if we receive it, it is life from 
the dead to us; it is the Spirit which giveth life, the life of 
God. The grace of Jesus Christ and the love of the Father 
are always with them who believe, but the blessed spiritual 
presence that is with them is the Holy Spirit. 

What a thing it is to be a human soul in this world of 
probation! The very Spirit of God bends to commune with 
us. He comes with treasures of blessing; those gifts which 



308 SERMONS. 

Christ has received for men. He invites us to commune with 
Him, with Him who is so wise, and so mighty and so holy; 
and He promises to make us like Him, wise unto salvation, 
mighty through God, holy as our Father in heaven is holy. 
Is it true? May we, who are so teeble, and so ignorant, 
and so wicked, may we have hourly communion with God's 
Holy Spirit? Yes, we may; our imagination is staggered at 
the thought, but so it is. There is none of us so weak or 
so sinful, that He does not invite us to walk with Him. 
And He will purify us from sin and fit us to stand before the 
great white throne. A little while is His presence here. 
There are a few days that we may enjoy His communion on 
earth if we have it, and there are a few days that we may 
seek it if we have it not. Shall not the time past suffice us to 
have wrought the will of the flesh? Henceforth may we have 
communion with the Holy Spirit of God. We shall need 
Him, His communion. His instruction, His comfort. His 
sanctification; that He may restore our souls, that He may 
lead in paths of righteousness. Doubt and danger are 
coming, temptation is coming, bereavement is coming, 
death is coming, eternity is coming. And we shall need 
Him. For He saith : ' ' When thou passest through the waters, 
I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not 
overflow thee," <' Yea," would our soul answer, <' Yea, though 
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear 
no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they 
comfort me." Yes, there is no human soul but must say 
when he comes to die, ' ' That, that is what I want, thy rod, 
thy staff." May it be ours now and forever! 



XI. 

THE GOOD SHEPHERD, 



The Good Shepherd. 

Preached at the Installation of Rev. Joseph Collie, a first graduate of 
Beloit College, in his pastorate of forty years at Delavan, Wis. 

John X. 11 and 14. 
I am the Good Shepherd. 

In these words Jesus expresses the relation between Him- 
self and His people. They are words full of meaning to us, 
but how much more full of meaning to the people of the East, 
whom the continual observation and experience of life for 
generation after generation, even from the time of righteous 
Abel, had instructed in those ideas of pastoral care and lamb- 
like trust, which were so fit to train souls for the reception 
of the principles of the kingdom of heaven; to the people of 
David, the shepherd of Bethlehem Judah, who sang that 
song, ^' The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." We 
remember that they were ^'shepherds watching their flocks 
by night," to whom the angel announced the birth of Christ 
and who heard the song of the heavenly host. 

And now Christ in the Temple announces Himself as the 
Good Shepherd. 

And thus He had been announced by His prophet of old — 
(Isa. xl. 10, 11) ''Behold, the Lord God will come with strong 
hand, and His arm shall rule for Him; behold. His reward is 
with Him and His work before Him. He shall feed His 
flock like a shepherd; He shall gather His lambs with His 
arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those 
that are with young." 

He it was that "led His people like a flock, by the hand 
of Moses and Aaron." And He it is that leads them now by 

311 



312 SERMONS, 

pastors whom He hath ordained, realizing unto us, so far as 
we prepare ourselves by turning unto Him, His word by the 
mouth of His prophet: ''Turn, O, backsliding children, and 
I will give you pastors according to mine own heart, which 
shall feed you with knowledge and understanding." 

Thus, it hath pleased the Good Shepherd, not only to 
make them that come to Him lambs of His flock, but also to 
employ them in His own office of leading and feeding the 
flock. 

Let us consider that system of pastors and flocks, which 
Christ has planned for the saving of the world ; and first let 
us see the estimation in which Christ Himself held the office 
of the pastor. 

''When they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, 
' Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?' He 
saith unto Him, 'Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love Thee.' 
He saith unto him, ' Feed my lambs.' " 

" He saith unto him again the second time, ' Simon, son of 
Jonas, lovest thou Me?' He saith unto Him, 'Yea, Lord, 
Thou knowest that I love Thee.' He saith unto him, ' Feed 
my sheep.' " 

" He saith unto him the third time, 'Simon, son of Jonas, 
lovest thou Me?' Peter was grieved because He said unto 
him the third time, ' lovest thou Me?' and he said unto Him, 
' Lord, Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love 
Thee.' Jesus saith unto him, 'Feed my sheep.'" 

The first, the second and the third duty of the lover of 
Christ is to feed the flock of Christ. 

The true function of the man of God is that of a pastor — 
a shepherd. 

It is an office constituted by Christ when He was on earth. 
It is one prepared by the Word when He made the worlds. 
The foundation of it is laid in the nature of man. In all 
ages of the world, in all religions of men, the spiritual guide 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD, 313 

has held a position of peculiar respect in the community. This 
respect has been paid to the office itself. The instinct of 
men clothes it with a sanctity which has been found to 
attract and to hold the veneration of men, even when they knew 
that the persons, who bore the sacred office, had nothing in 
their own character to entitle them to such a distinction; and 
what is all this but the practical assent of the souls of men 
to the belief that there is a sanctity and a truth which lies 
beyond the sphere of our senses, that man is made to 
receive from the lips of his fellow man the words of God, and 
needs those words of God, that he may live by them? 

Our human nature looks for a shepherd, who may 
feed it with the bread of life. It recognizes that that bread 
must come down from heaven, but still it does not look for 
God to speak out of heaven. The children of Israel under 
Sinai, spoke only the general instinct of mankind when <' they 
said unto Moses, speak thou with us and we will hear; but 
let not God speak with us, lest we die. " The Lord said, ' ' They 
have well said all that they have spoken." God did not 
m.ake man to be awed into obedience by overpowering displays 
of His awful majesty, but to be gently won by a persuasion 
addressed to the heart. Therefore that He may win our love 
rather than conquer our awe. He speaks to our human hearts 
through human lips. Even when Himself would come, He 
came in fashion as a man. 

Man's nature needs three authorities — the Prophet to teach 
the word of God, the Priest to offer our prayers acceptably to 
God, and the Magistrate to preside over the community of 
mankind. In the perfect state all these authorities reside in 
Christ alone, our Prophet, Priest and King. Xow Christ re- 
tains the priesthood for Himself ' ' abiding a priest continually, " 
having once offered up Himself and now standing ever before 
the throne to present our prayers to God. All the legitimate 
authorities of civil magistrates are fragments of His kingship, 



314 SERMONS. 

and the prophet work of uttering the word of the Lord 
devolves upon the men whom He sets to be the pastors of 
His flock. Their office is distinctly marked in that map of 
human life which exists in the minds of men, lying aloof 
from every other occupation, holding the line where human- 
ity borders upon Deity. He is a man of God, the body, 
mind and spirit of a man, yet if he be a true man of God, he 
has the Spirit of God dwelling in him, he has the mind of 
Christ, he is an ambassador of God. 

It is indeed an honorable office; that respect in which the 
heart of man holds it, prevalent and potent as it has been, is, 
after all, but a faint shadow of the real dignity of the office, 
as it is measured by the dignity of the God whose ambassador 
the pastor is, by the worth of the soul to which he is sent, 
and by the importance of the message which he brings. Yet it 
is a most hopeful and true feeling in man. It is just and whole- 
some, so far as it regards and affects the pastor himself. It is a 
most just and necessary and saving feeling, in its relation and 
effect respecting members of the flock. As the kingdom of 
heaven is in its beginning but as the grain of mustard seed, 
so there is an untold importance in those little things, by which 
grace first springs and continually grows in the heart. 

As Christ, the Shepherd Lamb, hath appointed that His 
elect be gathered into flocks, and placeth pastors over 
them, there is no feeling so appropriate to that relation 
as an affectionate regard on the part of each Christian for his 
pastor. The mind, which loves to criticise the minister, is in 
an unhealthful and unchristian attitude, but when you hear 
one say ''our pastor," you recognize a soul in which is the 
true home feeling of the house of God, a soul which, thus 
''speaking the truth in love," is in the way of growing " up 
into Him in all things which is the head, even Christ." 
There is almost nothing so essential to the health and growth 
of a church, of a flock of Christ, as that it have a shepherd, 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 315^ 

a pastor, who shall not be a mere sojourner, but who shall be 
theirs and they bis, bound together by home feelings, by 
responsibilities and cares mutual and common: that the pastor 
should be received and welcomed and cherished by the gener- 
ous love and confidence of the flock, a love and confidence 
essential to him, but even more essential to them; and that he, 
feeling the continual pressure of that confidence, should watch 
over their souls and the souls of their children, as one that 
must give account. Such an one the apostle exhorts the 
church to obey, that he may give that account ''with joy and 
not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you." 

The office of a pastor is a fearful office. It is an office 
fearful to assume and an office fearful to refuse. " We are," 
says Paul, ''unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that 
are saved and in them that perish; to the one the savor of death 
unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life, and," 
it is well added by the apostle, "who is sufficient for these 
things?" What man shall dare to go to men with those 
words which, if they be not unto life must be unto death? 
What man? What strongest and wisest of men shall under- 
take such a commission? Who shall dare to assume it? 
Let no man so confide in his own strength, as to presume to 
do the work of God. But who shall dare to refuse it? 
" We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excel-^ 
lency of the power may be of God and not of us." And 
who shall so magnify the importance of his own weak- 
ness, as to presume that it can make void the power of God? 
Therefore, let every man say humbly, " Lord, what wilt 
Thou have me to do?" assured that God can cause the lips 
of a child to be touched with a live coal from off his altar. 
And have we marked those words of Paul: " We are as a 
sweet savor unto God in them that are saved and in them 
that perish." Even in them that perish the faithful minis- 
ter of Christ is a sweet savor unto God. He hath done hia 



516 SERMONS. 

duty. He has spoken the truth in love; and so the work of 
love is wrought in his own heart. Therefore, 

The Office of a Pastor is a Blessed Office. 

^ ' If a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a 
good work." Every proper employment of men has a bless- 
ing in it, in that its ordinary duties may be done as unto 
God, who is served and honored by the fidelity of men in 
all the duties and labors of which it has pleased Him to 
make up the life of man. But to make the saving of souls 
and their training for heaven, the direct and ordinary busi- 
ness and employment of every-day life, that seems like life. 
To be the bearer of the messages of an eternal God to 
immortal souls, is not that an exalted ofiice? To bear to 
them that sit in darkness the message that God is light, to 
bring the words of eternal life to souls that were in the 
shadow of death, is not that a joyful errand? And then to 
be the pastor of the flock of God, to be His chosen servant 
in leading them, as He led His people of old, ''like a flock, 
by the hand of Moses and Aaron," is there, or can there be, 
anything in all the range of human employment, so desira- 
ble for a man, who has but one life to live before he passes 
into the presence of the '' Good Shepherd"? For this life, 
80 blessed in its course, is surprisingly blessed in its end; 
for ''when the chief Shepherd shall appear he shall receive 
a crown of glory that fadeth not away." 

If such is the calling of the pastor, so honorable, so 
l^lessed, so solemn as is that work of him that watcheth for 
souls, as one that must give account to God, who made this 
world for the saving of souls, to Christ that died for souls, 
account for souls whose eternal life or death is trembling in 
the balance; if all this is so, " what manner of person 
ought the pastor to be in all holy conversation and godliness ?" 
How should the man of God flee the snares of this world 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD, 317 

" and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, 
patience, meekness, fighting the good fight of faith, and 
laying hold on eternal life ! " 

We have a habit of thinking that such passages are for min- 
isters, that they are the pastors, the shepherds. And certainly 
the responsibility of the pastor's duty has not been over- 
rated. But is it in truth quite so diverse from the duties of all 
other men as we sometimes seem to assume? If the pastor 
does stand upon the line between humanity and Deity, is there, 
between that line and the position of us who are in other 
callings, ''a great gulf fixed"? I fear that, while we have 
been more just to him, we have suffered ourselves to fall 
back from our station. This care of souls devolves upon 
other men as well as upon the minister of a church, and so 
that charge of Jesus, '' Feed my sheep, feed my lambs, "^ 
passes on to us. 

Some of us are teachers or hold some charge in church or 
state, and there is not one who has not some influence upon 
some soul or souls for which he must give account. Some 
are parents, and each father in his own family is more a 
representative of Christ than even the pastor of a church, for 
he holds in some measure the triple office of teacher, of 
ruler, and even of priest. There is no one in all the com- 
munity who is not his brother's keeper, and there is no one 
who is not influenced by his brother. We bear, each one 
to every other, something of the relation of the pastor and 
something of the relation of the flock. Therefore it is 
fit that the ''elders feed the flock of God — not as beins: 
lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the 
flock; likewise that the younger submit themselves to the 
elder; yea, that all be subject one to another, and be clothed 
with humility ; for God resisteth the proud but giveth grace 
to the humble." 

So, throughout all the society of man, are these relations 



1518 SEB3I0N8. 

of the flock to the pastor, and of the pastor to the flock, 
woven back and forth, that so every man may stand in man- 
ifold ways in each of the relations, and all should help all, 
and receive help from all, in the nurture for heaven. 

Therefore, to all the intercourse of each one of us with 
every other one applies that charge of the great Shepherd, 
" Feed my sheep." 

Moreover, when we separate ourselves from our fellow- 
men we do not escape from the charge of souls. When you 
go by yourself to your study, to your office, to your counting 
room, to your field, there goes with you a soul whose shep- 
herd you are — a soul for which Christ died and which He 
charges you to keej). For that one soul no other man can 
have such a responsibility as rests upon you. You are to it 
as prophet to apply to it the words of Christ, as king to 
direct all its acting, as priest to lay it as a living sacrifice 
wholly upon the altar of God. Here, in this mysterious 
but conscious power over ourselves, for good or for evil, lies 
the real fearfulness and wonderfulness of the nature of man. 
Great and manifold as is the outer world, all that man sees 
without him is not more great, more manifold, more marvel- 
ous, than the world which is within him; those thronging 
thoughts, those rushing passions, those emotions, various 
and many as the winds, those mines of truth, those wastes 
of ignorance, those gulfs of error, those perils and those 
hopes, those tempters and those helpers, and among them all 
there is a soul to be saved, and you are the shepherd of that 
soul. 

Thus, even into the recesses of his own heart, the duty of 
the pastor and the dependence of the flock goes with every 
man. As a magnet may be divided into a hundred pieces, 
and every one shall be a perfect magnet, with its positive and 
its negative pole, so even in every single human soul, we find 
still the shepherd and the sheep, and the law of Christ. It 
is a care which may not be evaded or transferred. 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 319 

As we follow these thoughts upward, they lead us to a 
great mystery. We S]3eak concerning Christ and the church. 
That pastorship which we find so prominent in the pale of 
an individual soul, is still more perfect in that more per- 
fect One, which is made uj) of all humanity. Mankind was 
one. That one was broken by the fall. Christ comes to 
make us one again. He is our Shepherd. We are *' the peo- 
ple of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand." Yet, He is 
not merely a Shepherd. The " Son of God " becomes '' Son 
of Man." The Shepherd Himself becomes a '^Lamb of 
God. " Let us draw nigh and behold this great sight, the 
Shepherd-Lamb. 

We are accustomed to distinguish two uses of the word 
<'lamb" in the scripture; one regarding the lamb as the 
object of care, and the other as the offering for a sacrifice. 
Perhaps we ought not so to distinguish them, but each to regard 
ourselves, in relation to God, at once as objects of His care 
and as whole burnt offerings upon His altar. So the Son, 
coming to rescue us, laid hold upon our nature; He became 
of us, became not so much a man, as Man, identifying Him- 
self with the whole human race, constituting ''one new 
man, one whole of humanity, of which He was the Whole, 
and each individual that should believe on Him should be a 
member. Taking, then, our common humanity into His 
ov/n heart. He that was thus become the whole of ourselves, 
laid Himself upon the altar of God's justice, '' was brought 
as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shear- 
ers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." Thus was He 
^Hhe Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world," and 
thus did He become ' ' the Author of eternal salvation unto 
all that obey Him." Thus, even by offering Himself as a 
Lamb, did He become a Captain of salvation — become the 
Shepherd of the flock. He is " the Good Shepherd; the Good 
Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." 



320 SEBMONS. 

In the Book of the Revelation, the offices of the Lamb and 
of the Shepherd are blended in forms of such truth to the 
soul that we never think of any incongruity in the picture, 
but rather recognize in it the truest truth. We read, ^' They 
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall 
the sun light on them nor any heat; for the Lamb which is in 
the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them 
unto living fountains of water; and God shall wipe away all 
tears from their eyes." And again, ''I looked, and, lo, a 
Lamb stood on the Mount Sion, and with Him an hundred 
and forty-four thousand having His Father's name written in 
their foreheads ; these are they which follow the Lamb whith- 
ersoever He goeth." 

So He is truly ^' Son of Man," in that He not only comes 
to be our leader, a guide as a shepherd, but He comes to be as 
ourselves. He becomes one of the flock, and that not one proud 
and high in station, but He becomes a Lamb. For truly the 
Lamb, in all its meekness and dej)endence, is the proper ex- 
pression for the true present and the permanent condition 
and attitude of mankind as a race. Here on this earth, in a 
little degree and for a little season, one becomes the shepherd 
of others. But such a shepherd is all the while more a lamb 
than a shepherd. The greater his duty of care for others, 
so much the greater is his need of help and guidance and 
grace for himself, and in a little time all these pastorships 
shall cease, and all sanctified humanity together will be one 
as a lamb in the bosom of the Father. So it was meet that 
He who in Himself represents the whole of humanity should 
be styled the Lamb. 

The Lamb of God says to the Father, ''For their sake I 
sanctify myself, that they all may be sanctified through the 
truth." 

Shall we, led by the word of God, go higher still and 
consider how, as in all humanity, and as in every soul of man. 



TUB GOOD SHEPHEED, 321 

there is that double character of direction and obedience, of 
pastor and lamb, of fatherly care and filial dependence, so even 
in the Godhead itself, in whose image man was made, exists a 
like mysterious relation. Here we have the Father and the 
Son, a mystery to us, but not more a mystery than the facts 
of which we are most familiarly conscious in our own natures. 

'' The Word was in the beginning with God and the Word 
was God. " '' Christ Jesus, being in the form of God, thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God." And yet He saith, 
' ' the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the 
Father do; for what things soever He doeth, these doeth the 
Son likewise. " ' ^ I can of mine own self do nothing. As I 
hear, I judge; and my judgment is just; because I seek not 
mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." 

So we see that before all creation there existed the type of 
these earthly ties that are before us to-day. There was a 
Father and there was a Son, and, so long ago as the foundation 
of the earth was laid, there was a Lamb, the representative in 
the Godhead of the new race of babes and sucklings out of 
whose mouth God was ordaining strength. So long ago, the 
fall and rising again of that race was present in the Divine 
mind, and therefore there was in the bosom of the Father ' ' a 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." 

In the fulness of time the Lamb came and was slain, for our 
sakes sanctifying Himself, and praying for all that should be- 
lieve on Him, that all might be one — " As thou. Father, art 
in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us ; and the 
glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them; that they 
may be one, even as we are one, I in them, and Thou in me, 
that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may 
know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as Thou 
hast loved me." There is the fold to which the Good Shepherd 
by all these earthly pastorships, would lead His flock. 
When a soul has believed in Christ it is dead, and its life is 



322 SERMONS, 

hid with Christ in God. There it is, one with the Lamb, 
folded in the bosom of the Father, and '^ when He who is our 
life shall appear, then shall it also aj)pear with Him in glory." 

There were the souls of all that should believe on Him 
already present in His thought and in His heart from the be- 
ginning, even when ' ' God chose us in Him before the 
foundation of the world. " Even then He loved us and gave 
Himself for us, first loving us. How the tenderness of that 
heart, which from the beginning had loved the souls that 
were to be, beamed forth when Himself was on earth, the 
tenant of a human heart, clasping those souls closely to His 
own heart of hearts. Hear Him as He sent forth His twelve 
disciples to seek the lost sheep. ^'He that receiveth you 
receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth Him that 
sent me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a 
prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that re- 
ceiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall 
receive a righteous man's reward." But now, as He closes, see 
how the divine tenderness of that soul, that had waited so 
long, gushes forth — ^'And whosoever shall give to drink 
unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the 
name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise 
lose his reward." *' These little ones; " men do not love so to 
be styled; they think themselves experienced and strong and 
wise. It is the tenderness of Him that was from the begin- 
ning, looking with an eternal and an infinite love upon souls 
that were just commencing that immortality, which they were 
to spend in Him, in His own everlasting blessedness in the 
bosom of His Father. 

In His love He came and took our nature, and His aim is 
to raise us to His j oy . And what is His j oy ? It was not enough 
for Him to rest there in the bosom of the Father, in the peace 
of a Lamb, forever. It is the joy of a pure spirit to communi- 
cate joy. The Lamb must also become a shepherd, and for 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 323 

that joy set before Him He endured the cross. And the like 
joy He offers, as we have seen, to all His flock — that even 
the *' lambs," His " little ones," may be shepherds also, and 
may learn how much more blessed it is to give than to re- 
ceive. So our life is filled with these relations of care and 
and of dependence, that we may in all things learn to put on 
Christ. And, in that great judgment day, what shall be the 
test by which the sheep shall be distinguished from the 
goats? What e]se than that they have been found faithful as 
shepherds ? ' ' The righteous shall answer Him saying, ' When 
saw we Thee a-hungered and fed Thee? or thirsty and gave 
Thee drink? ' And the King shall answer and say unto them, 
'Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."' 
Ah! that is the assurance which makes it heaven itself, even 
here, to feed the lambs of Christ. We are doing it to Him. 
We are doing it to Christ. Yea, even we, poor lambs of the 
flock, are permitted to satisfy the longing soul of the good 
shepherd himself. 

So let us learn to follow Christ, and so may " the 
God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord 
Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood 
of the everlasting covenant, make you," you that take to- 
day the solemn office of pastor, and all of us in our little 
pastorships, '' perfect in every good work to do His will; 
working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, 
through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. 
Amen." 

With what shall we close more fitly than with that in- 
junction with which Jesus closed His charge to Simon Peter: 
'' Follow thou me;" for as the redeemed shall follow the 
Lamb whithersoever He goeth, even so in this kingdom of 
heaven begun below, our charge is to '^ follow the Lamb," 
follow Him first in being a Lamb and then follow Him in 



824 SEB^IO^'^S. 

being a shepherd, a pastor. In this world there is a broad 
line between the master and the servant, the leader and the 
led, '« But it shall not be so among you." '^ Whosoever of 
you will be chief est, shall be servant of all." Here is the 
fault of all our earthly authorities. No one of them is per- 
fectly a ruler, because no one of them is perfectly a 
servant. But Jesus is fully a shepherd exactly because 
He is perfectly a Lamb. Therefore He knoweth His 
sheep and is known of His and they follow Him, because He 
is a Lamb as well as a Shepherd. So let each of us, in all 
our pastorships, be fully a lamb that he may be truly a 
shepherd, following the Lamb — in His humility, in His love, in 
His devotion, in His care, as He goeth about doing good, as 
He Himself sought strength from the Father; and follow 
Him in His labor, and in His prayers, and in the duty of the 
lamb and in the care of the shepherd, laying ourselves like 
Him upon the altar of God, especially realizing like Him at 
once the devotion of the lamb and the care of the Good 
Shepherd in that offering Himself to the justice of God for 
the salvation of man, that so when the Chief Shepherd shall 
appear, we each may enter into the joy of our Lord. 



XII. 

THE VICTORY OF FAITH, 



The Victory of Faith. 

(Baccalaureate sermon, given, by request of President Chapin, at the gradua- 
tion of the class of 1865 from Beloit College.) 

I John V. 5. 

Who is he that overcometh the world, hut he that belieyeth that 
Jesus is the Son of God? 

Life is commonly represented as a warfare. It is so in 
the common speech of man; for man sees it and feels it con- 
tinually about him and within him. It is so in the Word of 
God; for as the veil is drawn away, the human soul is seen, 
not only as a field, in which passions are striving with prin- 
ciples, but as an infant, over whose fate mighty spirits of 
light and of darkness are waging fearful battle. 

The parties, as they stand in our text, are the human 
soul and " the world. " The soul, full of convictions of truth 
and duty, of law and right and honor, the home of ' ' thoughts 
which wander through eternity," of aspirations which rise 
to grandeur and nobility of being; and on the other hand 
^'the world," the general name for all those temptations, 
without and within, which allure it to forget its immortality 
and its perfectness, and to sink to meanness, and selfishness 
or lust. 

There are few sights under heaven more full of shining 
promise than the attitude, the common attitude, of a young 
man just ready to enter the field of active life. Such high 
enthusiasms! Such generous resolves! He has spent the 
time of his education in conversing with the great and the 
true men of all time. He has stored his mind and his heart 
with great principles; and he means that his life, whether 

327 



328 SERMONS, 

it be more or less conspicuous, shall be at least a true life. 
So he goes forth, but he finds a cold and barren world, and 
hunger comes, and hearts about him are stone; and then the 
tempter shows him some compliance by which these stones 
may be made bread, and he yields, and, like Esau, ''for a 
morsel of meat he sells his birthright." Another meets some 
success, and finds himself upon a i^innacle of the temple, and 
forgets the steadfast laws of God, and in his pride casts him- 
self forth in forbidden ranges of thought or of act, and so 
he falls, a shattered mind, a mangled soul, upon the rocks of 
ruin. A third has been enticed by the charm of power — the 
glory of kingdoms — and, for political success, his soul has 
fallen down and worshiped the devil. 

So, one after another, we may almost say rank after rank, 
the young men who commence life, resolved that the one life 
they have to live shall be worth the living, sink from their 
heroism. Oh! if we could see a generation, if we could see but 
one class of young men, who should carry on to the noon and 
through to the evening of life, the rich promise of the morn- 
ing! And why may we not? Why should ''the world" 
continually overcome the young men who commenced with 
the high consciousness of sons of God? Is all this enthu- 
siasm of youth a mockery of some lying spirit? or is there "a 
path of life " in which a man may go, still upward, still 
onward, until at the end of his course he shall hear the words 
"well done," and pass from the tuition of time into the 
fruition of eternity? Is it necessary that all our goodness 
should be "like the morning cloud and the early dew"? 

Our text and all this glorious word of God declare that 
"there is a victory which overcometh the world." And 
the instrument of this victory we are told is "faith." If 
there be such a victory, and if the instrument of that victory 
be within the grasp of man, we cannot do better with this 
hour than to inquire respecting that faith and that victory. 



THE VIC TORY OF FAITH, 329 

What, then, shall be the faith which can raise man above 
the power of these temptations and debasements of the pass- 
ing world? Evidently it must be a strong and living reali- 
zation that there are things greater and better than these, 
that there is a sphere of things unseen and eternal, to which 
the soul belongs more truly than it belongs to this world; 
that these — our ideas of beauty and purity and glory — are 
reflections truly cast upon our minds from that better sphere, 
and that these hopes, which men have cherished so persis- 
tently through so many ages of night, are gleams of true 
light let in from the gates of heaven. The faith which shall 
give us strength, must be one which will give " substance to 
things hoped for, and evidence to things not seen." 

If, then, the word of God which is in our hands, or the 
word of God which is in our hearts, be true, there must be 
certain grand realizations, which, entering into the heart of 
man, vail make him great and strong for victory over the 
world. What are those ''powers of the world to come," 
(Heb. vi. 5), those great beliefs, through which the Spirit 
giveth a son of man power to become a son of God? In 
what shall a man believe? 

I. LET us BELIEVE IN GOD. 

Let there enter into the depth of our being the persuasion, 
that there is, pervading all this system of things, a Spiritual 
Presence and Power, living from eternity; searching, ruling, 
guiding, judging all; searching and knowing us, our paths, 
our lying down, and all our ways; a mighty God, a holy God, 
a true God, a loving God. 

Let the mind feed upon so great a thought, and can it be 
a little mind again? let it feed upon so high a thought, 
and can it be a low mind again? on so pure a thought, and 
can it be corrupt again? on so dear a thought, and will it 
ever hate again? Let God be in all our thoughts. 



330 SERMONS. 



II. LET US BELIEVE IN MAN. 



Yesterday there was born, upon this lower earth, a child 
that is not of the earth. He was born feeble as infancy, but 
he is a child of God; and to-day he is the emperor of 
earth. The beasts of the field, the wind, the water and the 
fir.e are his servants. The awful powers of nature obey him, 
the sun paints his portrait, and the lightning does his errands 
over the continent and under the ocean. Yesterday he knew 
nothing ; to-day his thoughts search the foundations of the 
earth and walk among the constellations. He weighs the 
planets and measures the distances of the stars. The ray, 
which left its star a million years before he was born, cannot 
mock his infancy, for it finds him able to tell the journal of 
its voyage through space. Though born in time, he is born 
into eternity. And when the heavens shall wax old and be 
changed as a vesture, he shall continue. His thoughts, that 
wander now through eternity, take hold upon the eternity^ 
which his Father inhabits. 

And all this science is but the preparation for his wis- 
dom. The heavens and the earth tell him a knowledge 
which they themselves know not. They tell him of God ; 
and when that tuition is passed, they, the teaching earth and 
heavens, shall pass away, and leave their pupil in the pres- 
ence, in the wrath, or in the bosom of God. 

In this ability of man to read the meaning of God's works,, 
to understand God's thoughts and to respond to His emotion, 
we discern the true nobility of man. Nature, though she wear 
the livery of a monarch, is but a mute servant, bearing in her 
fragrant bosom a letter from the King to the King's son, and 
the mind that can read and the soul that can answer that let- 
ter, is the son of the King= 

And so we come to the third element which makes the 
system of saving faith complete. Believing in God, and 
believing in man, let us believe also. 



THE VICTORY OF FAITH. 331 

III. IN THE COMMUXIOX OF GOD WITH MAN. 

The alliance of the human nature with the Divine, the 
dwelling of the Divine with the human; the passing of 
the human into the Divine, and the union of the two in one 
nature, are matters incomprehensible to our philosophy, just 
as are the highest forms of all truth. It would be very mis- 
erable if they were not, if Ave were already, in our infancy, 
come to the answer to all our questions, to the limit of our 
knowledge. If it were so, it would be time to lie down and 
die. But, in these great questions, with which God has 
filled the soul, we have wrapped the promise of an immortal- 
ity, in which a purified mind shall, in the light of God, mount 
up with eagle wing into higher, newer, purer, holier truth 
forever. And this principle of the original oneness, of the 
continued conversation, and of the future new at-one-ment of 
the human and the Divine nature, is a conviction which has 
always filled the human mind. 

Heathen fables represent human heroes as sons of gods, 
and gods as coming down to walk with men, entering into their 
wars and their labors, their sorrows and joys, and again they 
represent men as going to dwell among gods and to be gods; 
and heathen philosophies conceive that man's nature is a spark 
from the Divine, shining here for a little time and destined 
to be lost in the eternal light again. 

What shall we say of all this conviction of the soul of 
man — this clear persuasion, hardly ruffled by the incapacity 
of the mind to answer the questions which it involves? 
What can we say less than that here we have the Spirit of 
God witnessing with the spirit of man, testifying that man 
is the son of God. 

To this son of God, conscious of his birthright and dis- 
contented here in the far country, feeding swine, comes the 
summons of our text, ''Who is he that overcometh but he 



^32 SERMONS. 

that believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?" , It is 
the Messenger of the covenant, saying, '' I am the Way." 

Man's nature is so made that it never could and never can 
be satisfied, with anything less than the recognition of its 
sonship to God; and the statement that the ' ' fulness of the God • 
head dwelleth bodily in the man Christ Jesus," only presents 
T^efore us in definite form, the great hope, which mankind 
never would let go, and which has sustained man through 
liis long debasement, the hope that ^Hhe creature itself also 
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the 
glorious liberty of the children of God. " 

Jesus Christ knew better than any Epicurean or Sadducee 
could know, that the doctrine of the sonship of man involved 
questions which man's mind cannot answer, and yet He knew 
better than Plato or Gamaliel could know, that that was 
the truth by which man must come to God. And so He says, 
with that wonderful calm authority, with which He Avas accus- 
tomed to speak out of the heart of God into the heart of man, 
^'None knoweth who the Son is but the Father, and who the 
Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal 
Him." 

The doctrine of the Trinity is presented in the Word of 
God, not because man is able to comprehend it, nor yet for 
the purpose of perplexing our minds with an enigma, but 
l)ecause, in that doctrine, necessarily, like all heavenly things, 
stretching off beyond our horizon, lies the power which the 
Spirit uses to save us. 

Our souls, by their very nature, want nothing less than 
the communion and the union of man, man like ourselves, 
very man of very man, with God, the infinite and the per- 
fect God, very God of very God. When man let go of God 
l^y sin, man fell: and what a fall ! How shattered the 
nature is, from that day to this. For its salvation it must 
come back to the Father again. And hoAV shall it come back 



THE VICTORY OF FAITH. 333; 

to God? The way, which the perfect wisdom has chosen, is 
the appearance of God among us as the Son, wearing our 
nature that he may draw us back to the Father's bosom. 
Now, w^hat by the felt necessities of our nature must such a 
mediator be? Let any man ask his own soul if it is not 
necessary that such a mediator be genuinely, honestly, fully 
man, otherwise he could not lay hold of our nature. Again 
let him ask his soul if it is not necessary that such a mediator 
be genuinely, honestly and fully God, that he may bring us 
with him ''into the bosom of the Father." 

That, nothing less than that, can be our glad tidings of 
great joy, the fellowship of man with the Father and witb 
His Son Jesus Christ, the fulness of the light of God. 

To that fact, that Jesus is the Son of God; that union in 
Christ and through Christ, of man and God, '' there are three 
that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son and the Holy 
Ghost." What simple wonders there may be in God; what 
manifold unity in the Infinite One, we cannot know. Three 
persons, three manifestations, are revealed to us because im- 
mediately concerned in our salvation. Our minds need to 
know God as the Father from whom come our own beings 
and all that blesses us, to whom we may kneel in thankful- 
ness and praise and prayer; and we need also to know God 
as the Son. God is the All in All; His nature is too in- 
finite to be bounded and excluded by our own. If we truly 
kneel. He not only looks down upon us with a Father's for- 
giveness and love, but He also kneels with us with a son's 
affection and contrition, and His prayer goes up with and in 
ours; not that, but ours in His. Also, we want to know God 
as the Spirit — a holy, pure and perfect Spirit, mingling with 
our spirits, shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts, 
renewing, comforting, instructing and sanctifying us. 

In these three aspects of Father, Son, and Spirit is pre- 
sented the testimony of heaven to the plan of our salvation; 



384 SERMONS. 

the Fatherly bounty giving us all things and withholding not 
His own Son for our salvation; the Son taking our nature and 
dying among us and for us, and the Holy Spirit manifesting 
His presence in our own souls. And this heavenly testimony 
is answered by a threefold testimony on earth: " The Spirit 
and the water and the blood." The spirit of man, feeling the 
communion of the Spirit of God, feeling its own wants met 
by this plan of salvation, and rising to newness of life as the 
Spirit of God applies to it the saving touch of God; and the 
water, the purifying of the nature of man, under the influence 
of this sense of salvation by Christ's blood, as applied by the 
sanctifying Spirit, is a testimony in the heart and life of 
every true believer, and in the history of mankind, that Jesus 
is the Son of God, and to the restoration of the fellowship of 
man with God. 

And then the blood; Christ beareth not the cross alone. 
From the beginning of time till now there has been passing 
through the history of the world a procession of witnesses 
who have by their blood set to their seals that God is true in 
His great and precious promises; to faith as the substance of 
things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. How 
grand and inspiring, as well as pathetic, is the view of that 
''cloud of witnesses" summoned in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. And what witnesses they are! 

The first witness is Abel. And what testimony can 
righteous Abel give to the victory of faith? We see him 
lying beside the altar of his accepted sacrifice, slain, mur- 
dered because his sacrifice was accepted. Is that vic- 
tory, and will it assure our faith? It would not, it could not, 
unless there were in our natures a chord answering to the 
faith of Abel. But because there is such a chord in human 
nature, we see in his death a higher testimony than that of 
any earthly success. As one who looks upon the face of a 
first born son, early at rest, and sees in those features so 



THE VIC TOUT OF FAITH. 835 

still, so calm, so purely white, not death but the better life ; 
not trouble and sorrow, but the calm fulness of joy and peace 
in the bosom of a Father able to comfort, so humanity sees in 
her righteous Abel, sleeping beside the accepted altar, while 
the murderer stands haggard and remorseful over him, the 
testimony that death may be the gate of life and that the 
true answer to our prayers lieth within the veil, and she as- 
sures herself that truth is victory. So the procession passes 
on; the conquerors, who had tokens of victory here, *^who 
through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, ob- 
tained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, turned to flight 
the armies of the aliens;" and the other class, to whom the 
higher reverence of man has given the name of martyrs, 
<'who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they 
might obtain a better resurrection; who were stoned, sawn 
asunder, tempted, slain with the sword." These are they 
that bear witness on earth, ''not with water only but with 
water and blood." ''These all, having obtained a good re- 
port through faith, received not the promise; God having 
provided some better thing for us, that they without us 
should not be made perfect." 

For Jesus and the martyrs testify that not only in the 
coming life, but also in this world, shall the promises of God 
be fulfilled. All their work and all their testimony is a part 
of God's fulfilling of great and precious promises for man- 
kind. They testify to suffering and fallen man that his 
Redeemer liveth, and shall stand in the latter day upon the 
earth. The work, to which Abel gave his early blood, went 
on in sorrowful victory till the Apostles saw Him that was "the 
Desire of all nations." But the Apostles died and left the 
promises of God promises still. What would they, as well 
as the prophets and kings of old, have given to see the days 
that we see? And yet these days of oui's, rich as they are in 
fulfillment, are yet more, far more, rich in promise. We 



336 SERMONS. 

shall see greater things than these. And if His work appears 
so great about us, how shall His glory appear to our chil- 
dren? Yes, and to all those witnesses also, for they are not 
dead. The God of Abraham is the God of the living. 

'' Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so 
great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and 
the sin which doth so easily beset us, and run with patience 
the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author 
and the finisher of our faith." 

In our own day we have seen a great battle in the war for 
the law of God and the liberty of man. Both were trampled 
upon in our own land, and when the conscience of our nation 
was moved, the oppressors felt the protest and, in their mad- 
ness, though no man lifted hand against them, they made war 
upon their country. They, too, bore a standard of liberty — 
the liberty of man to enslave his brother; and of law — the 
law of man's despotism against God's law of liberty. We 
loved peace and we loved our brethren, and w^e tried to de- 
fend our land without disturbing the old order of things. 
But that was not God's plan. It was a ^' great day of the 
Lord Almighty." And at last we heard the oracle which 
heaven and earth were telling us, and called forth the chained 
powers. Casting ourselves upon the eternal laws of God and 
the rights of man, we proclaimed liberty, and w^e found that 
we had great allies. The bondmen rose in armies and proved 
themselves men; our own souls, resting at last upon firmer 
ground, grasping at last great truths, w^ere mighty; and God 
wrought mightily for us. Though the contest, w^hile it was 
on us, seemed weary and long, now that it is passing away, 
how swift, as w^ell as how vast it appears. In one hour such 
greatness brought to naught ! 

And, now, w^hat a world appears ! We come forth like 
Noah from the deluge. The nation restored ; slavery swept 
away ; the sunlight filling all the West ; black clouds rolling 



THE VICTOET OF FAITH. 837 

away, and such a rainbow on them as the world never saw 
before. And as that rainbow shines, how the nations break 
forth into song. Where are the birds that in the day of storm 
hid themselves timorously among the branches ? Where are 
those that flew screaming away? Where are those that sat 
upon the left-hand hollow oak, boding disaster? They are 
joining the hymn. And let them sing. For the victory 
is for them as well as for us. ''While we were yet sin- 
ners Christ died for us." ''We reap the fruits of the 
labors and deaths of martyr men and peoples of old, and it 
shall be blessed if other peoples, too, shall enjoy the bless- 
ings of our deliverance. " 

But what a new earth we have ; if henceforward these 
great powers of liberty and law, these convictions of the 
rights of God and the rights of man, that have been so at 
war, shall work together in building up that kingdom, and 
greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, which "is 
given to the people of the saints of the Most High. " 

Shall we not, then, accept with reverent hope those proofs 
that the promises of God are sure, and, as sons of God, press 
on toward the realization of that great hope, that the creation 
itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into 
the liberty of the glory of the children of God? 

Touis-G ge:n"tlemen or the graduatixg class : 

In such a day of great things the Father has given you 
your education. Into such a day of great things He is usher- 
ing you at its close. You are not what you were when you 
came here, and the world is not what it was. Life is not what 
it was. God has been teaching you and all men great things, 
deep things, high things. The great crises, through which 
nations have passed, have prepared generations for great 
achievements. What shall be after such a crisis as this, 
bringing such a nation forth into such a victory? Among 



338 SERMONS, 

what men are you to stand and work? What themes shall 
fill the minds of your generation? What great thoughts 
of heart shall rise and prevail among them ? What material 
and civil and moral greatness shall there be upon this soil 
and on all this round world before you are gone. 

For many things every day do we bless the good Lord 
that hath planted and cherished this College, and among them 
not the least is this : that He planted it in such a time and 
land as this, so that it may take its place among the instrumen- 
talities for building up the new and better order of things. 
As we read the records of Abel and the faithful ones of old, 
we remember that there is also a new record like unto these, 
of those who willingly offered themselves for the right, and 
so are among the bright cloud of witnesses; and we are most 
thankful that so many sons of Beloit are among them who 
have been true to country, to man, and to God. 

Among those witnesses your class is not unrepresented. 
More have gone into the field than are with you to-day. Some 
have returned, some will return, and some return no more. 
You recall especially one who joined you early and was with 
you long. Edward Barber came here with an honest heart to pre- 
pare for life. He sought with you the wisdom of this world, 
but especially here he learned to look to Jesus as his Author and 
Finisher of Faith. He loved his classmates, he loved his 
studies, he loved the College; but he thought that his duty 
called him away. In no fever of excitement or flush of ambi- 
tion, but in the dark hour, because it was so dark, he felt, as 
he wrote, ''an imperative call to delay no longer the assist- 
ance which friends and brothers, already wearied and almost 
discouraged by long and apparently unavailing labors in the 
field, needed." And so he went, that heart so brave and 
patient and true — true to do and dare and suffer. When at 
last, worn by long disease, far from classmates and from home, 
his mind wandered before it took its flis^ht, he fancied that 



THE VICTORY OF FAITH, Sc:9 

he was here again with us. It was not to be. His education 
was finished. He was called to the commencement of a higher 
life. But in that higher life, how thankfully does he revisit 
these scenes, remembering that here Jesus was to him the 
*' Author" as he is there the ^'Finisher of his faith." And so 
he is added to ' 'our cloud of witnesses." Let it not be in vain 
for us that such have lived and died. But let us, too, lay hold 
of that great faith that overcometh the world. '' Jesus Christ 
is the Son of God." '^ He giveth us power to become sons 
of God. " Claim the promise and in His strength may you have 
the victory. Our prayer for you is that you may be true to 
God, true to man, true to the fellowship of God and men ; 
that in that faith ye may overcome the world, and that to 
each of you may be fulfilled that promise: ''To him that 
overcometh, will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even 
as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in His 
throne 



XIII. 

THE WORD AND THE SEED, 



The Word and the Seed. 

Preached in the First Congregational Church in Beloit, June 30th, 1872, at 
the time of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Beloit College. 

Mark iv. 26. 

And He said, so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed 
into the ground. 

Christ was in a boat by the beach of the Sea of Galilee. 
His audience were upon the shore, and His discourse to them 
repeated and explained the parables, which the shores of the 
Sea of Galilee had been setting forth to their cultivators, 
ever since the first ''sower went forth to sow " upon them. 
He pointed to the brown hillsides, on which the sowers were 
passing to and fro, and He gave them the parable of '' the 
sower," to illustrate the minds that receive the truth; and 
now this of the seed as committed to the fosterins: care of 
the earth, showing how the kingdom of God comes, and how 
little, and yet how responsible, is the part which man has in 
the work of God and the coming of His kingdom. 

Those men on the shore were looking for the kingdom of 
God. For had not the old prophet told of a Prince that was 
to reign in righteousness ? And had not John the Baptist 
lifted up his voice in the wilderness, saying that the kingdom 
of heaven was at hand? And Jesus, Himself, had come into 
Galilee preaching the gospel of ''the kingdom of God, and say- 
ing. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. " 
That was His proclamation, and when those men on the bank 
heard Him say, "so is the kingdom of God," they were intent 
to hear how it is. "So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep and rise, 

343 



344 8EEM0N8. 

night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he 
knoweth not how." The kingdom of God is to come in 
every heart and in all the world as the kingdom of summer 
comes in the land. When the sower went forth to sow, all 
the fields upon the plain of Gennesaret, and upon the hills 
which looked over the plain, were brown and bare; but the 
sower went forth to sow, and returned to his home, leaving 
the fields still brown; but as he slept there rose from these fields 
an army, Avith millions of spears, and now, before the har- 
vest, how the broad fields were waving with the banners of 
an empire. 

Like that, then, shall be the coming of the kingdom, 
so silent, so hidden, so gentle, so mighty, so victorious, so 
glorious. 

And the secret power of it all lies in something which is, 
for the world of mind, what the vital seed is for the soil of 
the field. What is that? Christ tells in another parable: 
The seed is the word; the field is the world. 

A word and a seed; they are the two parallel condensa- 
tions of power which God has made in His physical and in His 
moral world. He, Himself, takes the mustard seed as His 
illustration to those people on the shore of the Galilean sea, 
and it would almost seem that He had been preparing, from 
long before, the same illustration for times when the king- 
dom should have entered a broader field. I might show you 
a seed not heavier than a mustard seed, which came from a 
tree that may have been broader than this church and loftier 
than its spire; a tree which may have been growing on the 
mountains of California when the Savior was speaking on 
the Sea of Galilee, and whose parent may have been contemp- 
orary with the trees of Eden. And that little seed was the 
finished result of such a life, and in that seed was the energy 
which might produce such another monster. Just so, a word 
is the finished work of a mind, lighter than air, and yet 



THE WOBD AND THE SEED. 34> 

stronger than any other thing in the universe below God; 
yea, even the creative might of God Himself is called 'Hhe 
Word." 

There was the •' Word made flesh " upon that boat float- 
ing by the shore of the sea; and as the farmer, whom He saw 
upon the hillside, scattered the living seed upon the soil, so 
He was casting the words of life upon the minds which were 
before Him. 

A mind, before a word comes to it, is like a soil waiting 
for seed. As the live seed gathers the dead matter into a 
living plant, almost so, a living thought v>dll come into an 
inert or a chaotic mind and, as we say, make a man. 

They say that there are little seeds, spores they call them, 
floating in the air, so minute that we cannot feel them or see 
them, but we breathe them, and they plant themselves in the 
tissues of our system and draw our life away, working fevers 
and physical death in our members. However that may be, 
we all know how evil words are fatal to the soul, and that 
there are words whose ''entrance giveth light;" ''words 
which are spirit and are life." 

Single words in which are condensed great thoughts of 
men are grand powers which hold and which move the world. 
They embody living forces, which come in and take possession 
of intelligent natures, and form them and move them as they 
will. Man is a creature of motive. He calls himself a free 
agent, and yet he finds himself to be so the subject of his ruling 
thoughts and of the motives which come to act upon him, 
that he is compelled to admit that he is not his own. These 
ideas, these words, which rule and form us, seem like a race 
of living creatures. And they have kings among them; and 
they have- their own wars, and in the struggles of these 
mighty thoughts our minds are traversed or are captured, as 
the fields or the cities of the earth are by the race of man. 

Every year in midsummer our nation holds a festival. 



346 SERMONS. 

For what? For a victory which, a hundred years ago, one 
idea gained over another. And before that time, and since, 
all the land, and all the live world has been throbbing or 
convulsed wdth the strife of those thoughts. All the live 
world, we say. For there runs a clear line among the 
nations of men, between the living and the dead, or at least 
between the wakeful and the sleeping — between those which 
feel the life which was brought into the world by the words 
of Him who sat in the boat, on the shore of Galilee, and 
sowed His seeds of thought upon the multitudes on the beach, 
and those in whom those words have not yet taken root. 

Of these mighty v>^ords there are orders, as there are of 
the angels. Some are true and some are false, some are high 
and some are low, some noble and some mean, some earthly 
or brutal or beastly, and some humane, angelic or divine. 
And they come into our human nature and change us into 
forms, loathsome and noxious, or beautiful and good, accord- 
ing to the character of the seed. 

As the sower goeth forth to sow the good seed, the enemy 
cometh also and soweth tares. Every noble thought has its 
base counter thought. If from Bethel, ''the house of God,'* 
there rises an unseen ladder to heaven, from Bethel there also 
goes down, as every man may see, a steep gorge to the Dead 
Sea. For against truth and law, and liberty, and love, and 
heaven, and God, there are hypocrisy, and tyranny, and 
license, and lust, and the everlasting fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels. 

Perhaps we should also recognize a kind of intermediate 
class of moral growths, as of plants. We will not call the 
wild vine and the wild olive noxious, like the nightshade or 
the upas. They are unfruitful, but yet they perform a cer- 
tain office in preparing the soil for a better growth. They 
may even receive an engraft which can change them, as ' ' the 
engrafted word is able to save the soul." As yet they are 



THE WORD AND THE SEED. 347 

earthly, not devilish; selfish, not malignant. The words of 
Christ, taking effect in minds which are not renewed by the 
Spirit of God, produce fruits of education, refinement and 
civilization. So there has grown from those seeds of the 
kingdom this cultured realm, which even now we call Chris- 
tendom, the domain of Christ. The organic life of this civ- 
ilization, such as it is, centers in the words of Christ, espe- 
cially in that law, ' ' Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. " 

The great achievements of this civilization show how 
great a nature this human nature is ; and they begin to sug- 
gest how great it may become. If so little of the law of 
Christ as we have, can make the difference between Wiscon- 
sin and Dahomey, what will the world become when every 
man's heart is full of the fellowship of man, and every man 
shall rise to the greatness of " loving God with all the heart 
and. all the soul and all the mind and all the strength " ? 

So broadly and so greatly have the words of Christ 
sprung up in the arid soil of the wilderness world. ^ ^ Go ye 
and teach all nations," said He who brought from heaven 
those seeds of truth. And the teachers whom He sent have 
gone, scattering them on the good ground, and among the 
thorns and by the wayside, and even where they have not 
brought forth fruit unto perfection, /'the word has not 
returned to Him void, but has accomplished that which He 
pleased and prospered in the thing whereto He sent it." All 
this humanizing influence of civilization, with its advance in 
arts and sciences, in institutions of public and private life, 
in government, in education, in laws and in customs, has 
been preparing the soil for that Tree of Life which He came 
to plant. 

Of that Tree of Life, He, the Word of God, is the seed upon 
the earth; and that only is true life, which draws its life from 
that vital seed. 

As the seed falls into the ground and dies, losing its 



S48 SERMONS, 

narrow and secluded life to draw to itself the elements that 
are around it and to form with them a new body of quick 
life, and as that new body sends roots far down and far round 
in the dark and dank earth, that it may gather more and more of 
the capacity which is there and lift it up, by its own life, into 
the free air and toward the bright heaven, so, forth from the 
bosom of the Father came the Word of Life, the Son of God, 
the seed of heaven, and lived with us and died for us, that 
we might rise in Him in newness of life. 

Here is the secret of the true life of the renewed world. 
The precepts of the living Savior, like those of Confucius, 
might change the form of society and the habits of men's 
thoughts. It is beautiful to say, ' ' Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself." 
And such a precept, becoming popular, would put a fine surface 
upon society. But He who lived and died that doctrine, be- 
came a center of death to sin and of life to righteousness for 
as many as receive Him. He says, ' '■ Except a grain of wheat 
fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die it 
l)ringeth forth much fruit ; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, 
will draw all men unto me." Upon our earth was shed that 
precious blood. In the cold ground the Savior lay for us, 
and for the Father's love and law. That is a Word that means 
something; a word not of show but of life, and as we look 
upon it, we feel a secret power drawing us to it. We, or even 
the masters of Israel, may not understand what that power is. 
The particle of moisture or of earth does not understand what 
is the secret attraction of the seed, or the germ or the root, 
which is drawing it. And yet it is an earthly thing; it is in 
accordance with the deepest laws which the Son of God fixed 
in the world when he made the world. He did not make the 
soil to be forever inert. He did not make the soul to be 
only an earthly soul. Each was for something higher; for 
transformations from death to life, and from life to higher 



THE WORD AND THE SEED, 349- 

life, ceasing not short of the very life of God. This strange 
attraction which draws the soul to Christ, is the very leading 
of the Father, the working of the law for which He made the 
world; and this new moving in the heart to self-sacrifice like 
that of Christ, to love to God filling and expanding the heart 
and reaching to lay hold of heart and soul and mind and 
strength, it is the new ''law of the spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus," making us free from the law of sin and death. 

But how can these things be? Is it not all mysticism? 
We may answer, how can the seed, which dies in the ground, 
draw dead matter to it, and lift it up in newness of life? 
Oh, that we could at least have such faith as is in a grain of 
mustard seed. It does not pause to puzzle itself with the 
theory. It just falls into the ground and dies and draws, and 
up springs the plant, and the tree; and the birds rest on it& 
boughs, its cheerful blossoms fill the air, and for one seed in 
the spring there are thousands in the summer, all full of the 
same faith. Oh, if we had faith like a grain of mustard seed, 
how soon the earth would be full of the glory of the Lord ! 
From this powder of the seed of life spring, not only individual 
souls, like annual plants, but institutions, which stand like 
trees of righteousness to bless the world from age to age. 
Indeed we may better view the whole salvation as one tree of 
life, appearing in various forms and bearing twelve manner 
of fruit, but all from one seed, and from one root. 

There is the Church of God, the one fellowship of true 
believers, which, as it becomes more and more perfect, needs 
less of form, Jerusalem and Gerizim fading like morning 
clouds, as the day comes on, when the true worshipers shall 
worship in spirit and in truth. In the midst of human 
governments is growing a kingdom of God, ruling by laws 
written in the hearts of men. 

The power which is bringing all this on, is under 
this charter, ''Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing 



350 SERMONS. 

them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things 
vrhatsoever I have commanded you ; and lo, I am with 
you alway even unto the end of the world." Do you observe 
what that is, ''teaching and baptizing?" Is it anything else 
than what we call ''Christian education?" Perhaps it is, for 
He goes on to say, "baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." That is, it 
is an evangelical Christian education. That is the Tree of 
Life, which the Son of God came to plant. The first and cen- 
tral trunk of that tree was the little school of Christ; those 
twelve disciples, perhaps the happiest number for a class. He 
would not preach fully to the people till those men were fully 
j)repared to bear the seed of life. They were His Seminary. 
Do you know what the word " Seminary" means? It comes 
from the Latin word ' ' semen" — a seed — and it means a place 
for seeds — a nursery; and the system then instituted is one of 
the centers of preparation, from which the sowers go wath 
the word of life. 

In Cairo I found myself under a strange tree. Here and 
there, along its branches, come down long and strong shoots, 
seeking the ground, and when they find it they grasp it with 
new roots and become new centers of the life of the tree. It 
was a Banyan tree, transferred from the banks of the Ganges 
to those of the Nile. I come back to the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi and find that a tree which sprang from the words 
spoken by the Sea of Galilee, and which the Pilgrims planted by 
the Atlantic shore two hundred and fifty years ago, that that 
tree — the Christian college — has sent a strong arm across 
the land toward the setting sun. Here and there on its way 
it has sent down a shoot which has found good soil, but of 
them all there is none so dear, or to a perhaps partial eye so 
hopeful, as one which we saw, twenty-five years ago, coming 
down and striking: the soil in our own Beloit. We did not make 



THE WORD AND THE SEED, 351 

it; it came from above. But we invited it and we promised 
to cherish it ''with sympathies and prayers and contributions 
according to our means," a pledge of which we have not 
been altogether unmindful. But how much more faithful 
has the Father been ! The little shoot, then seeking root in 
the border, how it stands now as a tree in the midst of the 
land and of the earth! See how its boughs are .spreading 
westward ! See the shoot coming down from them and strik- 
ing gloriously in Minnesota; and that other one in Kansas, fed 
by martyr blood; and another is just striking the soil in Neb- 
raska; and this year has gone from here the impulse which 
may produce another in Dakota. Meanwhile the sowers go to 
the South and the broad North from sea to sea, and over the 
oceans to England and Japan, to Turkey, China and India. 
Great things God hath done for us, whereof we are glad. 
Dare we remain here and keep the charge which He hath 
committed to us in behalf of the Tree of Life? But who is 
sufficient for these things? How shall we enter into such a 
future? Who is sufficient? Christ is sufficient, and all we 
have to do is to take into our hearts that seed of life — that 
*' Christ Jesus be formed in our hearts, the hope of glory." 
*' Twenty-five years from now," said, in that day, a voice 
which is now gone up higher, ''twenty-five years from now 
the Rock River Valley will be one of the most blessed 
abodes of the earth." Thanks to God for the blessing^ thus 
far fulfilled and prayers to Him that He will carry on His 
promise unto its perfection. 



Such were the prayers and hopes in which Beloit College 
was planted, and in the early fulfillment of which the 
preceding discourse was given, at its twenty -fifth anniversary. 
The second quarter-century, now closing, has seen a larger 



852 SERMONS. 

fulfillment. Men who have gone from here have been 
engaged in the planting or development of more than twenty- 
five colleges, and have sown the seed of the word in almost 
every state and territory of our great nation. 

It is moreover a great blessing to the Rock River valley, 
that from it have gone those who, drinking " of that Spiritual 
Rock that followed them," have borne the Seed of the Tree of 
Life to the ends of the earth. It is thrilling, even now, to 
trace that line of living green around the world. We see it 
close at home among our own Indians; in Eastern and in 
Western Mexico; in Micronesia and Hawaii; in Japan and 
China; in Further and in Hither India; till we come to the 
lands where Eden was and where Enoch and Abraham and 
Paul walked, and we find the line again in Syria and Assyria, 
in Armenia, Cilicia, Macedonia and Bulgaria. There, in 
that Turkish empire, to-day, angels and men are looking upon 
the spectacle of a Christian people, slaughtered by Moslems, 
while in Christian Europe, six ' ^ Great Powers " stand by, 
paralyzed by their own policies ; and almost the only relief is 
a band of American Missionaries, dispensing the sympathy of 
Christendom. 

Among those missionaries have been eight from our own 
College, and now there are three Institutions of higher Christian 
Education, presided over by three sons of Beloit ; one on the 
Tigris, one on the Euphrates, and one in Tarsus, the city 
from which the Apostle to the Gentiles came. There they 
stand, in their patient energy and their peaceful valor, giving 
aid and comfort to body, mind and soul. 

It is an image of those silent but true influences of the 
word of life, working not only there but in every land and in 
every calling, which, as we hope and pray, shall make Hiddekel 
and Euphrates, and our own Rock River also, ^'heads'' again 
of the river which ''went out of Eden to water the garden. " 



